


Fear of Commitment and Monsters

by ThePiningTrees



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: 3-yearolds, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Author is a certified snack, Brotherhood, Canon-Typical Violence, Cock-Blocking, Crack, Daddy kicking ass, Enemies to Lovers, Horror, M/M, People almost die a lot, Rated M for Monsters, Slow Burn, This was not in the brochure Yen, Unreliable Narrator, Valdo is a twat, Written by Julian Alfred Pankratz, bad touch (not by MC), no roomservice in haunted cabin, past abusive relationship, sexy modern Witchers, tripping in the dark, very reliable author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-14 16:09:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 46,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28673505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePiningTrees/pseuds/ThePiningTrees
Summary: An indie folk singer-songwriter fallen from grace decides to write an autobiographical novel, documenting what happened to his 26-year-old self and his band during their disastrous camping trip deep in the vast, dark woods of the Morhen wilderness reserve.Think Blair Witch project, he pitches, but with Witchers! And since he’s got a flair for the dramatic, he insists on posing for the (raunchy) cover and makes it a horror comedy. The reader might find scenes and lines corresponding to the movie Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. This, he assures with fervor, “Is pure coincidence, darling. Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life, as posited by my professional equal Oscar Wilde.”
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 79
Kudos: 64





	1. Foreword by Julian Alfred Pankratz

**Author's Note:**

> Chez is the amazingly talented artist who collaborated with me on this fic. They captured the geist of this cheesy horror parody with uncanny precision. I mean look at the cover! Thank you, Chez, without your input and art as a beacon I wouldn't have made it through the night.
> 
> I want to thank babydollbucky for beta:ing the first drafts with such patience and class. They didn't laugh (in my face) at the now deleted, burn and exorcised sex scenes. Ash tells me that my laptop has been cleansed from evil, but you never know.
> 
> Leave a kudos or a thought in the comments if you want. Fingers crossed that you'll be the virgin who survives all the way to the end.

**Reviews**

Julian Alfred Pankratz grapples with the lessons of his young life with unflinching honesty. It’s a love letter to life and the friends who has the privilege to know him, a deeply intimate investigation of graces, truths, and the beauties of brutality. My own memoir is trash in comparison. I just wish I were him. I wish I had his looks. His boyfriend must be so grateful.  
\- Matthew McConaughey

  
Dear reader!

Look at the strapping young lad on the cover. _Sexy_ , isn’t he? No wonder I once had 5 110 188 Twitter followers before I put the lute down and walked away from that life.

Now look back here. The book you are currently holding in your hand is not just the steamy, retro paperback you picked up in hopes to sate your carnal appetites (naughty you). No, this is my genesis, the uncensored, altogether true recount of the events that took place in the vast, inaccessible wilderness of the Morhen woods in August, 2020.

It’s also the tale of how the strapping young lad lost his virginity. No, I’m joking. I was 26 by then, and I can say with confidence that I was safely past that mark. (Sorry, mum.)

Now before you run, Darkness and Evil are not the only things this story contains. _Romance,_ my dear _._ You will encounter a romance evoking the most passionate and inglorious emotions of human nature, between a courageous knight and a cursed beast. Although the knight in this modern tale is a certain beloved singer-songwriter and the beast is not a beast other than in the revile of the illiberal.

Few of you will believe my story (some will sue), but good stories are not written to be believed. They are written to move the audience.

Your humble author,

_Jaskier_


	2. Portrait of the author

__

_  
Portrait of the author, age 19. Performing as Hamlet in a fresh take on the classical play by William Shakespeare. The author co-wrote, co-directed and performed the male lead in the sharp-witted rendition that received critical acclaim and the audience’s standing ovations during its long successful run at his mother’s theatre. To this day there’s still whispers of reverence in the auditorium of the young Julian Pankratz’ performance, especially when a role requires an actor with a sure handling of his audience’s vulnerable hearts; someone who can move you to tears with a faint but significant tonal change, rest assured that you’ll be recovering within his competent embrace._

_It’s rumored that there were more than timid whispers echoing in the auditorium on the night the author, dressed as Puck but tastefully, returned with his lover for a romantic picnic under the glittering backdrop, but there’s simply no way of knowing for sure. It might have been but the crescendo of a midsummer night’s fever dream._


	3. Evolution of the North Kaedwen Wolf

The story begins, as all stories of a first time writer, with someone driving a car followed by a lengthy physical description. I shall, of course, honor this tradition.

We find the fabled Beast of yore, the White Wolf, the Witcher Geralt of Rivia driving through the wild forests of north Kaedwen, tapping an idle rhythm on the steering wheel to accompany the steady humming of Roach’s engine—Roach the Jeep. This man, this myth, is an existential anomaly cast in the aesthetically pleasing body of a gentleman in his mid-thirties. His aging ceased to progress in the 1200s, and for sanity’s sake we’ll assume it was something he ate. Like undercooked chicken but instead of salmonella you contract the unpleasant and hard to get rid off affliction known as immortality.

The jeep is a recent update from traversing the Continent on horse-back. In his texts he writes Continent with a big C, permanently vague on which fucking continent he’s referring to, which makes planning a trip considerably more stressful than needs to be.

Sir Geralt of Rivia kept an equine travel companion up until seventy or so years ago which in terms of an ordinary human lifespan equals around... June, last year? He calls the Jeep Roach for sentimentality’s sake and has been caught scratching it behind the side-mirrors.

What’s in the tank is not diesel, I’m quite certain. The type of fuel seems to be between Geralt and Jeep. After extensive research on the subject, I place my bet on a cocktail of vitriol, rebis, aether and, le deep sigh, drowner brains. I guess an environmentally friendly hybrid wasn’t enough. He’s so incongruous with the times, our knight. He often wishes there’s a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve left them. (My publisher says I shouldn’t steal quotes from the Office, because they will sue. But I don’t know. I think I’m just gonna go right ahead and do it. Geralt isn’t the most verbose partner and 98% of what he says he speaks in fluent Sarcasm either way.)

The man defies labels but I will do my best to describe the clot:

White, melanin-free hair. Brushed silky-soft close to the scalp, tied at the nape of his neck, closely-cropped sides. He insists it’s practical. I insist it's sexy. A hipster beard that denies the stereotype. For someone living all year in the outdoors like an ostracized Bear Grylls, beard-growth becomes less of a fashion statement and more about keeping frostbite at bay.

What else? Amber-colored irises catching the sunlight. The eyesight of a hawk, scanning his surroundings, the night-vision of a nocturnal predator. The black circles under his eyes are permanent due to 700 odd years of insomnia and 2.5 taxing years as a single parent, but just like the rock on the bottom of the Gwenllech river his heart has been honed to soften ever since he acquired his little Child of _Don’t eat that, me zirea—No! No, spit it out! Fuck._

I renounce the need to detail the rest of his physique, even though I have a mighty need to delve further into that particular research topic. In length, in depth, for hours, burning the midnight oil until we’re both academically satisfied and experts in our respective fields.

When we begin our story Geralt is tailing his brother Eskel’s truck. They are headed for a restricted area in the Morhen mountains visited only by the Witchers themselves and a few government workers with remnants of Aen Seidhe in their genes.

As Geralt drives through the old hidden mountain pass the road narrows and twists. Geralt slows down to keep the livestock trailer safely attached to Roach’s tow ball, counting on the sedated but live content inside the trailer to remain under the anesthetic for another hour. The most precious cargo is strapped in the child seat: Ciri, his daughter.

The three-year-old is sleeping soundly through the humdrum with her head tucked in the travel-pillow, her downy hair wafting in the breeze from the cracked pane. She’s drooling on a worse for wear baby goat that’s missing an ear and despite the great, great lapse in logic and species is named Lamb. 

Geralt fondly checks on her. “Almost there,” he says in the low murmur that won’t disturb her sleep, because even though she’s asleep at the moment he is used to her ’discussing’ her current topic of interest with him while he drives. Not that he necessarily needs another essay on Farm animals and Why they are Great, but he’s curious to know what she’ll think of his old stomping grounds.

”I think your perception of Morhen will be… a bit different compared to mine. There’s a lot of history for me there, but you wouldn’t know that. You will see and hear everything for the first time.” He doesn’t like looking in the proverbial rearview mirror, not when looking reminds him of how much time has passed—how much times have changed.

The medallion hanging from Roaches’ mirror in a blue string (no, it’s not a friendship bracelet he maintains), although old and worn, isn’t the original piece forged by his teacher’s hand and bestowed to him as a symbol of reciprocal respect and loyalty. With it he gained an identity; a family. He gained a lot, and he sacrificed a lot else. And for some godforsaken reason he’s still here centuries later, with a three years old protegé and a choice to make: to start afresh with no connections to the past, or to start the forging process of a little Wolf all over again.

Geralt lives a solitary existence clearly defined by his profession and by single fatherhood. The two are not always congruent; Acting as a child’s primary caregiver, versus spending most of the year roughing it in the planet’s last areas of wilderness, tracking down relicts that were supposed to be extinct 600 years ago. His primary goal is to capture and transport these creatures to a safe area before they are discovered by news stations and local authorities and youtubers. Or cause a scene, also known as the creature/demon/ghoul who slaughtered a remote village, or the agile serial killer scaling house facades in 1900s London. 

Humanity knows him as a professional liar, a con man, a poacher and a thief (funny how this is _exactly_ what he will accuse me of). Most of the year Geralt and his daughter live out of motel rooms or tents or campers—that’s the job, and it pays in scraps. He gets his intel from questionable sources low on cash or from tighfisted mages uncapable of appreciating the fact that someone has to do the dirty work.

He tries to give his baby girl at least a taste of normal life now and then. When he’s not working they live a quiet existence tucked away in a modern, nondescript little bungalow on a cul-de-sac in a quiet family-friendly neighborhood. The house belongs to Eskel and the mage Triss Merigold, but they are more than willing to lend the spare bedroom.

Both their hearts melted the day an exhausted Geralt showed up on their doorstep with a six months old human baby somehow strapped to his chest with the same ropes he used to secure relicts (the blanky was new, or Eskel hadn’t known of his brother’s affinity for fluffy clouds).

Theirs wasn’t a difficult adjustment to make. Especially for Eskel, since the neighborhood watch explicitly forbade him to keep livestock in the back garden. Eskel and Ciri are a team; working in tandem to bring the neighborhood to its knees before them. In a pinch Triss is persuaded to be on Ciri-duty, which is never recommendable but produces entertaining end-results.

It was Triss who called Geralt up some time ago, hinting that maintenance of the Morhen wilderness reserve was long overdue.

‘You haven’t visited Kaer Morhen since 1948,’ the permanently youthful woman said, impatience sneaking into her usually amicable persuasion tactics. Geralt assumed that the strain in her voice was caused by the noises in the background: it sounded suspiciously like Ciri had just aarded her lego tower into smithereens (why conventional daycare is out of the question).

Triss muttered something like ’I can’t wait to have an alcohol again, any alcohol would do’, and Geralt bit his cheek. She may be the best in her field, the Q of the headquarters to borrow from Ian Fleming, but Triss regressed to the most ancient teenager in history whenever she had Ciri for longer than a day. She always met him on the driveway armed with a fizzy enhanced energy drink in her hand and dried apple sauce in her hair.

‘You are avoiding the inevitable,’ she said, ‘And you can’t pretend it doesn’t affect you.’

He’s avoiding it in the side-window right now. In the middle of the Morhen reserve is the old Kaer Morhen forge, the nest from which Geralt and his brothers once migrated from each spring like birds of passage. The moat is now part of the heath, with no inscriptions marking the graves where most of his brethren rest. The Morhen mountains are a haven for relicts, beasts, draconids, necrophages, ogroids and other supposedly mythical species. The Witchers refer to them offhandedly as _relict_ , an organism that once was abundant across large areas on earth but now occurs only in a few, forgotten by all. Geralt not only lump all these species together—he categorizes himself as a relict and won’t be told otherwise.

‘Does this lead anywhere?’ Geralt had asked impatiently. He fumbled the smartphone to his other ear, the Elven by 0.2% police agent intently looking on over the brim of her ice blue Powerade bottle.

A thousand curses on paper-thin phones, and sensation-seeking Elven cops who thought going up with a house warrant against a hag would protect them from catching the curse of lycanthropy.

‘I’m in the middle of something.’

By the gleaming sweat on young agent Renfri Nivellen’s forehead, she was a handful of hours from her first transformation. He would sweat rivers too if he knew he was going to lose himself to a psychotic rage. The cop snarled, claws ripping through the plastic and crumbling the bottle. He kept throwing stuff from her drawers into a trash bag, wishing she had the wits to tell him which clothes she preferred. It would be a long time before she’d be able to return to her apartment.

‘The Morhen druids are supposed to contact us if they need our aid but there’s been no contact for decades,’ Triss said. ’I reached out to Iris last night, after Ciri went asleep. She’s… she’s old and gaga, Geralt. I think she’s dying. She hardly recognized me.’

’Do you know for certain she’s dying?’ Iris and Olgierd had been the custodians of the reserve since when? His centuries were blurring together.

’No. I wasn’t allowed close enough to get a reading—you know how Olgierd is. I think they’re both against retirement by principle, but they eventually agreed to let you in. They could use a pair of strong, healthy Witchers to repair the fences.’

Not the most exciting contract, but assisting an elderly druid couple was 9 out of 10 the decent thing to do. Besides, an inner voice in his head said, sounding suspiciously like the old man’s, bringing Ciri to the Kaer Morhen was a rite of passage; the last Child Surprise to be molded by the forests of Morhen. He remembered himself as a scrawny novice, running through the woods with nothing more than his rod and youthful confidence, dueling monsters with considerably wider wingspans than your average crow. Being picked up 10 000 feet in the air and retrieved from a wyvern’s nest by his teacher four days later.

‘Is it safe to bring a knee-high assistant?’

‘I would think so. Olgierd assured me how the place practically runs itself. Every biotope is striving.’

Sounded promising. Safe. Geralt recalled the vast fresh-water lakes, cool and shimmering with mountain run-off. He refuses to expose Ciri to anything remotely close to the training regiment of his youth, but shouldn’t there be a middle ground? He will do it differently, like it should’ve been for all those boys in his youth. ‘I could teach her how to catch a fish.’

Triss laughed. ‘She’s three, Geralt. I’d postpone the bushcraft until she’s old enough to pronounce her own name without a lisp.’

‘Hmm. I won’t rush her.’

Turns out there was still power in the ‘kill two birds with one stone’ concept; help the elderly to cross the street and get a vacation out of the deal. Geralt ends up driving north with a mint fresh werewolf in the trailer; the weather forecast promises a clear sky, and there’s a skiff conveniently towed by Eskel’s truck. Of course, as soon as the image of a quiet day on the lake returns, Geralt’s Jeep is cut off by a rampant obstacle.

A perfectly ordinary bear slips through the narrow time-gap between Roach’s grill and the end of Eskel’s truck, putting Geralt’s reflexes to the test.

Ciri awakes with a start and grabs hold of Geralt’s hand where it is placed protectively over her and the goat. He murmurs reassuringly and leans slightly towards the open pane to scent the breeze. There’s blood from the bear and saliva, confirming his suspicion that the bear was attacked, and a rotten stench that reminds him of mangy wet fur and ozone.

A miserable whining comes from the trailer.

“Are you okay, weddin?” He ruffles Ciri’s hair to lure her from warily watching the roadside. She hums back with the full gravity of a toddler approaching middle age (she has adopted her own version of his trademark non-verbal noises). “I’m okay,” she admits, wrinkling her nose in deep thought. He will never grow tired of that adorable nose-wrinkle. “I’m thirsty.” She settles on what she perceives as the proportional retribution.

“Fair enough. I think Eskel has some juice boxes in the cooler. Flavor?” It’s a decent excuse for leaving the car. He needs to check the bear’s tracks.

“Apple.” Said with a vicious nod that looked like it hurt. When did human children gain control over their limbs, again?

He carefully parts her fringe with his finger to look at her more closely. “Is that the orange one?” He asks. “I definitely heard you say orange.”

“No, not orange! Apple!” she protests and the wariness in her apple-green eyes is replaced with mirth.

He hums in feigned confusion. “That’s the purple one is it, or is that cranberry? I can never tell them apart.”

Her eyes widen and she exchanges an exasperated look with Lamb, like she can’t believe the shit the two of them have to put up with on a daily basis. “No, no, no…” Tiny hand across forehead, a comissirating headshake: _my dad is so stupid_. “Apple green, dad! Apple _green._ ”

It’s hard to keep a straight face when she’s being so cute. His demeanor breaks into a smile. “What, apple is green? Ell’ea... You know, you have an unhealthy obsession with the apple flavor. Might have to cut you off before it starts to affect your job performance.”

”No, dad. I give it to Lamb.” She holds the fluffy toy up to his face. A very convincing maneuver that would’ve fooled a lesser Witcher, he’s sure.

Geralt uses the opportunity to sweep the side of the road outside her window. Still no sign of movement, but he still has to check what’s out there. ”I hear we’re not done with this discussion, me zireael. Will you wait here for me a sec? Let’s play the Stay low game.”

He puts the radio on to drown out any disconcerting noises from the woods and signals the ‘stay low’ sign he taught her (she loves practicing if they make a game out of it). He makes sure she has the baby goat tucked close to her chest before exiting the car.

Eskel has exited his truck and comes walking down the roadside, double-axe resting faux-casually on his shoulder. The crossbow hangs on his back like an extra limb. 

“There’s a warg-shaped hole in the fence,” Geralt says conversationally. He puts on a vest from the storage unit on Roach’s roof. Gloves follow suit.

The distant yips and snarls from the bowls of the forest ignites an uncomfortable itch running up the side of his stomach. He furtively runs a hand down his shirt, feeling the ridged scar from the last confrontation with _Beann'shie_ , the two centuries old queen of Morhen’s warg pack (originally shipped in from Ireland by black market poachers).

Wargs were vicious mutts even before the population dwindled and became too endangered to put down on sight, but you’ve never seen them quite like this. Their current appearance and behavior are the result of crossbreeding, a deadly genetic cocktail of the original mellow warg of the 1100s and the demonic barghest. They are capable of vanishing and reappearing at will. Think about it: A lean, mean killing machine capable of accelerating to 20 meters per second in 4 seconds flat—like a cheetah. Appearing in your bathroom while you shave. 

I for one would hate to see a pack of those beasts escape the Morhen reserve and reach the streets of modern towns. The carnage. The paperwork.

Lambert, the youngest of the trio, leaves the passenger seat of Eskel’s truck belatedly, and begrudgingly. He takes a convincing swig from a half-empty beer bottle and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. His other hand rests on the piston of his Witcher-altered revolver. The revolver and the Stetson shielding his head from the beating Morhen sun are remnants from the eighteen hundreds, back when America was some kind of Frontier. Lambert might be the first person to organize a stagecoach robbery, in cahoots with the infamous outlaw physician Doc Regis Godefroy, and there allegedly was a stormy love affair with one of the train robbers of the James-Younger gang (before an unanimous vote got the man hanged).

Parallel to the relicts, the Witchers’ weapons have evolved to fit the new work description of protectors, not slayers. Lambert has the revolver with tranquilizer bullets; Eskel prefers the traditional crossbow with tranq bolts and the axes when he wants to make a lasting dent, and Geralt retrieves his graphene composite pole-axe from the roof of Roach. He feels the pre-hunt rush when he weighs the pole in his hand. The axe is perfectly balanced for rapid switching between the usage of the spearhead and the tail end. In other words, perfect for dealing out a punishing blow over a warg’s snout.

Eskel scrutinizes Geralt’s tense body language with an astute gaze. ”How’s Ciri doing in there?”

“She’s fine, asking for juice,” Geralt responds. He has unfinished business with Beann'shie. She submitted once, but he suspects leaving her alive only pissed her off. She’ll come looking, sniffing around his kid if he doesn’t find her first. ”Will you two hang around while I go ask for an audience?”

“Is that wise?” Eskel’s a practical man. “You’ve got a baby on board and if the entire pack breached the fences there’s not enough anesthetics to go around. Lilith knows what followed.” He shakes his head in understated dismay. “The rational thing to do is to pay a visit to the von Everecs and find out what’s going on.”

The lycan cop makes a clumsy attempt to charge at the interior of the trailer, its body-slam sending a metallic groan through the undercarriage. She’s not freaking out at the scent of other relicts in the area. No, she’s sensing another threat, a threat she knows: Humans.

”Dammit. I was planning on spending most of this trip fishing, sleeping and drinking, in no particular order,”—Lambert jingles the beer bottle in his hand—“not put my neck on the line because some old druid didn’t bother to do his damn job.”

Then the deafening squeal of tires tear through the air and the humans arrive. A large van appears out of nowhere at high speed, barely avoiding a collision with the trailer and bouncing Lambert off its windshield mid-sentence. The van barrels forward several meters ahead of Eskel’s truck before it comes to a violent stop.

Let me set the scene: Lambert’s in the ditch, Eskel has Geralt against the trailer after shoving him out of the collision course, and the automatic sliding door on the family van glides open.

Heads up, because you’re about to meet 26-year-old me.

I’m a stunning vision in sneakers with rainbow soles. I wear my holiday tennis shorts with pineapples on them, and a lovely teal t-shirt sullied by Cheetos crumbles and sweat stains (I was in a van for five hours! At least I moisturize). I’m in need of a haircut (you know the circumstances in 2020) which is why there’s a useful headband in my exquisitely tousled hair completing the look I’m going for that day. I am, for lack of better wording, a certified snack who’s not trying too hard (I was definitely trying too hard).

It’s always awkward to write about oneself, yet I cannot shirk this duty, no less than I could deny readers the description of Geralt. Fans may know me as Jaskier, the jack of all string instruments, master of the renaissance lute, and a passionate singer-songwriter—held as the posterboy of indiefolk. Lovers may know me from my strictly one night only performances, because this bachelor won’t be tied down (by commitment, not… not by other, uh, stuff).

A vagabond in my own right, no one told me what to do and where I needed to be. Except my mother; Yennefer my manager; and the record label… and the sponsors. More or less everybody seeing as I lived to appease, addicted to the roaring applause over a well-received, sweaty stage performance. Do I need to be liked? Absolutely not. I like to be liked. I enjoy being liked. I have to be liked, but it’s not like this compulsive need to be liked, like my need to be praised cemented at a young age.

What the heck was I doing there, you wonder. Well, my band and I were driving up north for a retreat in the woods to nurse our creative minds. We were expecting rippling streams and kumbaya around the fire. Downtime with no press folk hounding us. We have absolutely no idea of the actual nightmarish hounds waiting by the corner to gollop us up whole.

Naturally, I peek my head out with my heart in my throat expecting the bloody carcass of a pedestrian on the tarmac. Aiden, my poor tortured cellist, crowds over my shoulder.

Now, this is where perceptions differ. I maintain that the causes of the first misconceptions between Geralt and I was due to our combined heightened levels of stress. Geralt had the dad stress, and I had the lack of experience and 26 years of Not handling things well. The last time I was that scared was when I underwent minor surgery and spent an overnight stay at the hospital. I was forced, by a very mean nurse whom abhorred the right to bodily autonomy because it would ‘upset the other patients’, to wear a pair of unisex underwear manifacured sometime in the 1930s, by my inspection. Used and washed repeatedly, by unknown carriers who some, you’d assume, died horrible, unsanitary, _unthinkable_ deaths in them.

The horror of those undergarments pales in comparison when Geralt meets my eyes across the distance. My agitated brain registers his intimidating physique, the intriguing scar curving across his left eye and down a lean cheek towards his ear, the irregular network of scar tissue on his arms, the result of thousands and thousands of hunts. There’s an ethereal aura to him, proudly standing there in the road like a specter from another time period. This is what people mean when they say they drove past the ghost of a soldier walking home. All in all; the dignified, unapologetic stance and the physical proof of all the times he faced adversity and prevailed (actually: kicked adversity’s ass), all of that comes together to punch through my abdomen and my resolve.

My visceral experience is interrupted by Lambert staggering out of the ditch, swearing up a storm. He’s waving around the jagged edges of the broken beer bottle in one hand, the revolver dangling from his other. This is what people mean when they say they were one poorly chosen sentence away from a fight down by the pub. I’m yanked back to the reality at hand.

“Oh, gosh. This will definitely be uncomfortable.” I hesitate with my foot hovering above the ground while the others in the van shout at me to _fucking_ _don’t!_ Don’t risk my neck in the name of basic civil behavior. Basic, civil _I’m sorry we almost ran you over, are you alright?_ I hear my teachers, my acting coaches and my parents tell me to not ever put myself in a situation where I risk a black eye and broken nose—don’t ruin your career. I hear Yennefer tell me that she honestly doesn’t care if I get in a fight—she’s sure I’ll live, but could I not get punched in the throat this close to the recording date?

Is there a risk? I hope fervently that Valdo’s driving hasn’t re-opened any mental wounds from past car accidents and/or bare fist fights to the death for these lads because honestly, I left my… bare knuckles at home. And in the last decade.

Apparently I look satisfyingly contrite, but the fact remains that these three ancient retirees are having technical difficulties interpreting what exactly we are supposed to be and what are those plastics on Aiden’s ears (wireless earbuds, Geralt) and what are we doing in a restricted area protected by a magic Quen the size of Poland.

Worst case scenario: we are trophy hunters, poachers. The most despicable manifestation of a human being according to Geralt.

Geralt is about to politely address this little conundrum when a hand grabs the scruff of my neck. I let out quite an embarrassing sound—I was caught off guard. Aiden has taken one damning look at Lambert, and decided _hell no._ He pulls me back inside with such abruptness that Geralt assumes for a moment that there’s a relict-related kidnapping going down.

“Go, go, go!” Aiden slams his palm on the ceiling like some bank robber in a B movie, encouraging Valdo to step on the gas.

Geralt runs heroically towards the van to ask us to not, perchance, drive into the thick of a Monster park, but the offending driver accelerates, and the van disappears around the bend in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

It’s an awfully dramatic set-up.


	4. The Heartbreak kid

A cosy retreat in the mountains was Yennefer’s brain child and thus her fault, I maintain. Although I suspect I am the original source of the problem. A week before the trip we met up for a liquid lunch at the pub where we were inveterate regulars (their Nonino cocktails, oh my god).

I ordered ahead and prepared to wallow in my misery; asking Yennefer for leniency and comfort respectively as I was approaching the fifth consecutive month of not producing any new music. Nothing, nada, not a single note of originality. Some people told me it was a common phenomenon when you got signed by a label as a solo artist, a jinx of sorts. A performance issue (shudder). I also wasn’t allowed to perform in front of audiences due to the pandemic which for some reason made me drink more. And more.

...And still more. It had been six months of steady decline, lonely nights and no inspiration.

Yennefer arrived, stole my drink, ordered an amarone wine and told me to quit being a fucking baby, for christ sake, what did I think I was doing? And that she had found a solution that would benefit us both.

She had scoured our contacts and brought an informative binder; headshots of my new band members, and an itinerary for a bonding retreat in the woods, all expenses paid. Even I couldn’t mess that up, I figured as I flicked through the binder. I didn’t even have to lift a finger, though I would have liked to have some part of it involved in the decision-making process.

‘I haven’t had a full conversation with at least three of these people, and now you’re sending me on a woodsy retreat with them? This will go down as a bigger fiasco then when Michael Scott took the office on a team-building retreat to the beach,’ I grumbled. ’And I’ll tell you right now—I will definitely not walk on burning coal for wanker fucking Marx.’

Yennefer took a measured sip of her wine. ‘I’ve heard he’s matured a lot since he had kids.’

I glowered at her through my haze of 1 pm inebriation. Yennefer wasn’t just my manager. She was my best friend, ever since she needed a last minute opener for a band and I happened to be in the vicinity with my lute (technically we were on a date, and it went poorly). I loved her unconditionally, but by god I swore I would cut her out of my life tomorrow morning if she forced Valdo Marx’s company on me after all the, uhm, progress I had made... I couldn’t articulate that, though. She’d think less of me if she knew.

‘You always do this.’ I showed up with the sole intention to whine and I’m no quitter, damn it.

‘Why are you being so stubborn? These are your _friends,_ ” she sounded genuinely perplexed. “I’ve personally hand-picked these people for you. I know for a fact that they are the most overqualified out of work musicians out there and I know they will stand your personality enough to make it through the production of an album. Which starts in September! You know this, Jaskier,” she sighed. ‘At least Valdo knows what to do to get you going.’

_What gets me going?_ ‘Bullocks,’ was my sputtering gut response. ‘More like…more like going to prison, because he sure brings out the ole’ murder instincts.’

Yennefer laughed. ‘You,’ she gasped, wiping away a stray tear, ‘murder instincts.’

‘Oh, I came close once, you don’t know.’

‘You bit his finger, once. That’s what goats in a pet zoo do, Jaskier. It hardly counts as threatening.’

Yennefer folded her arms, flaunting the swell of her breasts while my brain sluggishly backtracked to process the fact that my arch nemesis from college—my ex from college, yes those two sometimes overlap and converge into one single piece of garbage—had procreated a child. _Childs_. Well, children to be grammatically correct, but I suspected that might be a stretch in other definitions of the word. There must be a hoof or two in their lineage. Atail at least, I thought sullenly. Why was my cocktail glass empty?

‘I will be there too,’ Yennefer confessed, in a milder tone. ‘To supervise.’

I flinched back in shock, sending my glass wobbling. Which is a bit over the top, but that’s how we communicate, with exaggerations, passive-aggressive flirting, boobs (her) and bicep-flexes (still her).

Yen regarded me under the raven-black line of her eyelashes and offended me by serving her immaculate ‘client smile’. Her manicured nails tapped a rhythm across the binder that sounded suspiciously like the theme to Jaws.

‘You’ll be my—our Michael?’ I asked, hating the undercurrent of vulnerability in my voice. I missed her. We hadn’t had a heart to heart like this in months. Busy woman.

‘I hope not. Michael organized that trip to find a successor before he went to New York.’ She smiled sweetly and gave my hand a comforting squeeze. ’I’m not going anywhere.’

Oh. _Ooooh_ , she’d watched the episode. She’d watched the show, probably as research to use against me in a moment just like this when I’m at my most vulnerable and needy and drunk … but still! _Still!_

I thought it over, while Yen’s smirk grew and she ordered my favorite snacks to soak up all the alcohol I inhaled. (I wasn’t drunk, though. I wasn’t.)

Clichés aside, a cabin in the woods sounded like _the_ perfect place to be in the summer. It would be August by then, I thought, the bitchiest of months. My apartment already refused to reach a degree below 28 degrees Celsius. (Maybe because my windows were stuck and I couldn’t call the landlord because we had a uhm, intimate moment in the laundry room and then I wasn’t interested in a sequel… maybe I had to move. Yes, yes, that sounded more and more like the only reasonable solution.)

I was being offered a two week vacation, for crying out loud, and knowing Yen would be there and hold my hand? The chances were she had bought the whole luxurious packet with hot springs, massages and a private chef. Yennefer never did anything by half-measures. 

‘Fine,’ I conceded, mauling the forth mini-burger into my mouth, bravely ignoring the asphyxiation. ‘Lets go over the rest, shall we?’ Although it came out _lerth-orhresth-ahhne?_ With a gazillion crumbs spraying over her cleavage.

Yennefer was scarily good, the way she’d figured out who I needed to be around to grow as an artist, even though her choices were somewhat... unexpected and not entirely what I wanted? She’d gotten Ellen Daven, drummer extraordinaire and the third musketeer in my old trio of friends from Oxenfurt. I knew for a fact she was not taught by J.K.Simmons in Whiplash, which was a relief. I hadn’t talked to my friends in a while, though. Why keep in contact after graduation, really? You’re supposed to be on your own at last, and I had been suffocating for so long in my little square box.

Ellen brought her younger sister Essi. I had already written a dozen of songs for her during the length of our friendship, seeing as she had been the little sister hanging around us for most of college. I could see her as my future co-vocalist—a commitment that I treated with greater respect than I would for a formal marriage (I vow to never marry unless to piss someone off). She was kind, had a soulful presence and her Etta James covers made me believe in reincarnation. I’d be grateful to have her.

Fringilla Vigo was another obvious choice. Classically trained, violin was her forte. Multi-instrumentalist, and there was no secret she regarded herself as Yennefer’s best friend.

Aiden was one big unknown, chaotic variable who I knew only as the disgraced ballet dancer turned professional cellist who starts brawls at the venues he performed at. Which was a feat, considering he mainly performed in under-founded concert halls, retirement centers and churches. Yennefer seemed to be the only one with the patience to deal with him.

And wouldn’t you know it—Vilgefortz, last name escapes me, made the list. ‘Well, well, well. Haven’t you slept with him?” I accused and tossed a mangled napkin at Yen. ‘J’accuse.’

‘It’s hard not to screw him. He’s my boyfriend of six months and we are talking about moving in together.’

I didn’t particularly like Vilgefortz, for reasons I couldn’t fully understand. Essi said it was the protective brother psychology hijacking my brain. My sister said it was the middle child rearing his ugly head. I, for one, think it’s down to Will’s personality.

‘Is he? I don’t recall.’

‘If we’re going to spend two weeks by a lake in the sun my boyfriend makes the list. He’s a good composer.’

‘Oh. Right, then.” I arched an acerbic eyebrow, even though I felt the air leaving my sails as I spoke. “I see how this all works out for _you_.’

‘Oh, don’t pout. I haven’t been on a holiday in years.’ Yennefer waved the waiter down with a flick of her wrist, efficiently ending the conversation. ‘This is the only solution I could think of that benefitted both mine and your career. _Jim_.’

Low blow. I turned to look morosely into the imaginary camera. ‘I will have to wear my safety mittens for this, won’t I.’

*

Later, when I’m loudly snoring on Yennefer’s couch holding a decorative pillow to my chest (because Yenna refused to let my drunk ass knock on my landlord’s door asking for another round, do I _want_ to get evicted?) when the clock passes 2 AM, Yennefer is stirred from her sleep by a sound in her bedroom. A voice, barely there, grating, impatient: _When will you be here?_

Yennefer mumbles in her pillow as she drifts off: ”Soon.”

*

Call it hindsight, but we should have prepared ourselves when Valdo forced the poor van onto an overgrown dirt road leading us into the darkest most dense depths of the Morhen woods, followed by Yennefer and Willy in his fancy two-seat Miata (making the most of their romantic getaway).

At the end of the road is a cabin secretly camouflaged against the background of looming pines. We pour out of the cars, squinting through the shade cast by the dense roof of the canopies, and deflate collectively at the sight.

Essi tilts her head to get a better look at the uprooted birch sunbathing on the roof like it was nobody’s business. “There’s a tree on the roof.”

Aiden rubs sleep from his eyes with the heel of his hand. He has no right being so cute and disgruntled, ironically (I assume) wearing a frayed t-shirt with a kitten on the front. ”What kind of fresh fuckery is this?” He grouses with his smoke-damaged vocal cords. He’s the bad boy of the string section. He’ll shank you with the bow if you greet him with the phrase _Yo-Yo Ma!_

I squint at the hovel. ”Where’s the kitchen staff? And the pool...and the rest of it? I thought I’d at least get a personal trainer.” Let’s face it, I needed a personal trainer after all the drinks and hamburgers I consumed over the past year. I look at the forest and ugh, am I supposed to, like… go for a run in there? With all the pine needles finding their way into my hair, and my socks? I’m not sure I even brought the right footwear.

~~Vilgefortz~~ Dick opens his mouth to say something more eloquent and reassuring for his girlfriend’s sake, since we are all struggling with full sentences. ” _Wow_ ,” he settles with.

“Oh my god,” Fringilla wrinkles her nose at a possibly structure-bearing post on the porch that’s been extensively diminished by persistent rodent teeth and/or termites. She clutches her violin case. “This is a health hazard if I ever seen one. Are we really going to sleep in there?”

It’s not ideal. It’s...

“Woah, this is truly horrid!” I say through pinched nostrils as I duck under the skewed hanging lintel above the door. ”When was the last time anyone cleaned in here?”

My words drift through the grave, mold-tasting silence permeating the place before they are devoured by thick walls. The likeness between the cramped interior of the cabin and the belly of a beast comes to mind. _We are going to die in here,_ the voice in my mind predicts, I call it the Ghost of King Hamlet, _we are going to be digested in here._ There’s a small crunching sound and my shoulder dips when Yennefer leans on me to check under the sole of her shoe.

“I think I stepped on a dead mouse.” She looks more dejected than I have ever seen her to date. Her arms come curling around my neck, and her forehead fits neatly under my chin. Shortie.

“Hey…” I say reassuringly. It’s really a testimony of her declining mental state that my _just spent five hours in a car eating cheetos_ cologne doesn’t bother her. I squeeze her tighter. “Have you been body-snatched somewhere between here and the walk from the car?”

“No, I’m just pissed,” she mutters, but the uncharacteristic seeking of comfort begs to differ. She’s so endearingly out of her element, and unreasonably crushed by being scammed out of a reasonable vacation home.

“Well I think it’s perfect.” I grasp her by the hand and drag her back to the porch, because the asthma I didn’t know I had is acting up. “Seriously, is this what they call a fixer-upper these days?”

”Look there’s furniture on the porch. For sitting! And look at these lovely front steps.” The wood deflates like a sponge cake when I set my foot down. ”They are practically made to welcome a road-weary musician and his instrument, if you don't mind the termites.”

We will make do, I decide vehemently, because Yennefer’s frown quivers with a smile and she’s one more joke from smacking me and calling me an idiot. That’s affection, in Vengerberg terms.

”We can live as kings out here!” I say and nearly collapse straight through the seat of a rocking chair.

The front of the cabin seems to sag slightly to the left, or is that just the slanting angle of my sitting position? All in all I decide that I’m pleased, nay, delighted by it’s rustic charm—there’s really no other alternative beyond running headfirst into a rusty nail and die of tetanus.

“I will call you Greg,” I ordain the rotten, kid-sized rocking horse keeping me company on the porch. In response, a family of bugs crawl out of the black hole that used to be its face.

The rest of the band takes a more cautious approach, mainly trailing after Valdo hoping he’ll be the first to die from a falling shingle. Valdo stops accusingly over a scrapheap in the undergrowth.

“Are we supposed to throw our garbage in the woods too?” There’s an embedded insult to the owners that are conveniently not around. I wonder how the hell Yennefer found this place. Murderhouses.net?

Ellen squats down and pushes the weeds aside, revealing part of an irregularly bent square frame, on which the rust-ridden iron pipes are welded in parallel rows. “Uh you guys. Is this a cage?”

Definitely murderhouses.net/kinks/bondage.

“We can probably turn it in for recycling at that gas station we drove past,” Essi says and looks at the van, where Vilgefortz is methodically pulling out luggage and placing everything in a neat, color-coordinated row on the pine-covered ground. He might mainly be in the process of intense mental compartmentalizing, on closer inspection.

“You’re so naïve,” Valdo dismisses her with a sneer and a look in my direction. “You saw them on the road. Do you really think these people recycle?”

_These people_. Valdo’s still the self-entitled asshole I knew from my more impressionable years of college apparently. I shake my head in disbelief. Valdo has indeed procreated but if having a family hasn’t changed his tune I can’t see how this collaboration will work. I can’t do this again. I’m tired of arguing. Look. Let me info dump:

Valdo is my ex, and the chafe on the heel of my existence. I was in love with him, and then I fell out of love. No, not ’poof’, here one second, note on the bedside table and flimsy exit at 5 in the morning gone. I’m talking about multiple give it another try’s, miles and miles walking around in shoes that didn’t quite fit. I realized quite quickly in our relationship that I couldn’t stand Valdo’s presence unless in short glimpses with month-long intervals. He was contentious, but lacked the curve balls. It was on me to save the conversation and my confidence. Look, I’m sure that I had my fair share of flaws as well, and in time my own behavior only grew worse.

See, here’s the bittersweet truth of dating someone in your class: I couldn’t exactly get a clean break. We were majoring in music. Every morning class, everywhere I went for five years there he was, resentful and argumentative. Persuasive. So. I may have let the relationship carry on far too long after its natural expiration date, just to save my sanity. I dabbled with so many variants of the open relationship variety (cheating, I was cheating, there I said it) that at the end of it I was dead tired and swore off relationships to the end of my days. Honestly, I don’t know how my parents do it.

In conclusion: You don’t want to hang with the person who reminds you of the worst version of yourself.

”Do you think those men from the road will be there?” Essi looks nervous, because she is a good person who never finds herself in these cocked up situations. Like leaving three locals with car trouble stranded on the side of the road in a haste that would more or less qualify as a felony: I mean, look at the windshield on our van and the crack shaped like the ass of a drunk cowboy clearly visible in the sunlight.

“You better hope not. Didn’t you see the iron pipe he was swinging at Jaskier? Those hicks will do more than trash a few headlights if they see our cars,” Valdo states, reminding us what was in the hands of the man chasing down our van. “Aiden knows what I’m talking about, don’t you, man?”

Aiden, the embodiment of every ballet dancer’s worst retirement fear, rolls his eyes over the cigarette he’s in the process of lighting up, but doesn’t bother with an answer.

“That’s a lot of self-entitlement for someone who ran a man over with his car less than an hour ago, Valdo. What’s your secret?” I say from my royal high-seat on the porch.

Valdo cocks his head with a condescending smile that once made my toes heart beat faster. “Everyone inside the van was fine, Jaskier,” he says, eyes widening in faux innocence, “I did what I had to do to keep you all safe. What more do you want from me?”

There’s a pressure in my chest; An irrational anger I can’t even place. How come someone so obnoxious deliver such flawless arguments?

“What more do I… Oh, I don’t know, how about an ounce of decency?” I try to get out of the chair for a proper kerfuffle. “Why don’t you sleep in the barn tonight, huh? There must be a bloody barn somewhere around here. I hate— shit. I’m stuck...” It’s hard to look around when my hips are stuck in a square frame. “Yenna…”

Yennefer pulls me up by my ear.

“Come on,” she commands, twirling the car-keys to Vilgefortz’ Miata, “lets go to that gas station and buy their entire stock of cleaning supplies.”


	5. Is it Hereditary?

“I’m going to find whoever is in charge here and see if they’re willing to deliver,” Yennefer tells me when we enter under the bell announcing our presence. “I might be a while. Look around for non-perishables—and Jaskier? Try not to buy something we don’t need.”

I’m perplexed. “When have I _ever_ done that?”

“I don’t know, don’t you pay for an extra storage unit because your wardrobe can’t fit your clothes?”

Huh. “That’s a misconception and a _lie_ ,” I say with no real heat. ”My wardrobe fits my wardrobe perfectly. It’s the other stuff that needs the extra unit.”

We are inside the roadside store—the only establishment within miles, and the weirdest gas station / grocery store / thrift store / little shop of horrors, I have ever heard of. Including horror movies.

LAST CHANCE is painted on the building, and I honestly don’t know if it is a warning or the name of the store.

I peruse the aisles on my lonesome and try to not freak the fuck out. The shelves are lined with different animals that were once living their best lives, before they suffered the fate of taxidermy. They stare at me with glassy, petrified eyes from the most erratic, unsanitary placements, right next to the groceries and the camping gear. I end up eyeballing a stuffed owl, who I swear eyeballs me back. It’s appearance is… off. I can’t put my finger on it, but that’s a peculiar subspecies of owl if I ever seen one. I briefly considered a purchase of a bottle of Tequila and _one possessed owl, please, make it Hereditary_ , when there’s a metallic thump on the floor.

A soup can rolls to a stop at my feet.

I’m acclimatizing to the senseless order to the best of my ability and have done pretty good so far, even after I walked face first into the animal hides (I don’t know what I licked and I prefer to live the rest of my life not knowing). But a soup can rolling out from its place in the neat row of identical cans of its own volition, now that requires some further investigation.

I hunker down and peer through the hole in the row where the can had been. “...Hello? Anyone there?”

The tiniest child I have ever seen peers back at me with light green eyes glinting with mischief. I am 99% convinced that this is a live human child and not something out of a Japanese horror. Perhaps 89%. I regret my decision to watch Ringu on my laptop on the way up here.

“Uhm. I haven’t met a lot of kids in my short life,” I say conversationally, because kids sense when you’re not honest with your feelings. “You have to tell me if you’re not a kid. Are you… a mouse perhaps? Do you live behind these shelves, stuffing your cheeks with cheese and crackers and evade paying taxes? Are you even registered to vote? What’s your affiliations?”

She does have the cutest hamster cheeks. The kid’s eyes brighten, and I hold my breath waiting for the response. Will she talk like a normal child, or speak in tongues. Is there really a difference, at her age, we’ll find out. The kid… doesn’t utter a sound.

“Right…” Prolonged awkward silences give me the heebie jeebies. “So. Are you browsing or do you have your mind set on something special?” I vaguely remember my cousin’s children and their obsession with plastic food. “Did you know I once bought plastic milk? I made pancakes, don’t ask me how—family recipe—and served it with plastic bananas. I tell you, it was a hit with the young crowd.” 

The kid, expertly ignoring my nonsense, stands up and disappears out of view. Oh, well. I’m not offended that she finds my company so…. boring? Then a can on a slightly higher row slowly and very deliberately gets pushed down. I’m there just in time, catching the can one-handed. It’s actually surprisingly heavy. I look at the position on the shelf—she must have scaled them like one of those frantic zombie herds in World war Z.

“Woah, you are strong. You’ve got some juice in those noodle arms.”

A delighted giggle erupts from the other aisle. I can’t help but smile. At least her laugh sounds perfectly normal.

*

The back office at LAST CHANCE has a stairwell leading to the second story, where the von Everec lives. Every step Yennefer takes deflates the wood, but no sound reaches her ears. The tight passage leads her to a hall and past a wheelchair, to a lounge, where Iris von Everec sits crooked by a desk. The woman taps a finger on a photograph, foreseeing Yennefer’s request.

She picks up the photo with bated breath. ’Are these my parents?’ She feels no recognition, even though another minute passes by. She wants to crumble the photograph in her hand; lit it on fire. ’How come I don’t remember them, even now?’

Mrs. Von Everec reaches with a rheumatic hand for a glass container of writing ink. She hesitates, her fingernail resting around the lid. When she speaks, the voice matches the one in Yennefer’s head; the voice that had been speaking to her from the corners of her bedroom. ’When was the last time you opened a jar?’

Perfect, it’s one of those conversations. Yennefer puts the photograph in the pocket of her shorts. She figures she’s within her right.

’I have a good feeling about you.’ Iris hands her the glass jar. ’You have the right twist of the wrist.’

The popping sound of the lid is anticlimactic; the allegory does nothing to further her understanding. Yet Yenner schools her face, and prepares to take notes.

*

The life of seven or eight cans are saved that day. I don’t notice the mumbling conversation drifting over from the counter at the front of the store. At last an old woman’s voice is calling out something that sounds like either the freaky dying rabbit sound _Eeeeiiieee_ or a recently napping senior citizen suffering from pharyngitis, or simply _Ciri!_

The kid stares at me with round, wide eyes, and whispers as she’s sharing something she isn’t supposed to share, “Scary lady.”

Then she presses her hand to cover her mouth, like a child being frightened by her own hiccup (or realized she has just broken the two rules of a game: no speaking, and stay low.) “...thuck.”

_Thuck_ , with an adorable lisp, sounding like an elderly toothless man who broke his pipe mid-cleaning it. She totters off towards the back of the store and disappears behind a curtain hanging from a door frame, leaving me to assume she’s the shopkeeper’s grandkid. It makes much more sense than a parent leaving their small child alone in a store, but what do I know of child rearing? May I remind you that I was 26 and planning on being a bachelor for the rest of my life.

”Bye.” I shrug, grab the chips I want to munch on through the rest of this underwhelming vacation and saunter back to the counter. I’m on verge to tear open the bag of chips for a taste (it’s not ’sea salt and malt vinegar’ or some fancy crap like that; it’s just dependable ole’ onion) when I glance up and stare at the silver fox currently being served.

Then, I grab my own neck hair and throw myself and my groceries behind a stand of fishing rods like a ninja losing his virginity (quick and discreet). My heart pulsates in my ears as well as in my left ankle. I grimace and pray it’s not sprained (it wasn’t).

Now, let the record show that I was not actively perusing for a cute booty, or even a hot patootie at this point in time. I was solely a victim to the gut reaction running through my very virile, healthy body; the primitive switch in my brain simply going _Hi-YAH!_ and brutally karate-chopping my pleasure center right in the gonads at the sight of this fine male specimen. Which happened to be one of the men that according to Valdo wants my tail lights smashed in.

I should’ve been cautious and slipped out a backdoor, but instead I fight the urge to climb the counter next to the jerky and offer myself up as a snack.

The old shopkeeper’s voice drones on:

“…Saw blades, bone saw, hand drill, nail gun, stone drill, rope, condoms—”

“All you got,” Geralt intercepts. “Each needs to be fortified with silver threads.”

”What will be an acceptable count of silver threads in the condoms?” The old man, who’s bald, decrepit and has permanent disgust holding his face hostage, asks with a judgmental tone.

“ _The ropes,_ Olgierd. The condoms are just… Lambert failing to be funny.”

”I see.” The shopkeeper hums skeptically. He resumes his monotonous reading. “...Wet wipes—I guess that’s related—tarp, shovel, bleach, gasoline, matches… Ah, see here.” He puts the list down on the counter and points with an old gnarly finger at one of the items. “We are out of those.”

Geralt’s gaze shoots down and narrows. “What do you mean, you’re out of… bear traps?”

He looks bothered and insecure, like haggling is on the top on the list of things he hates most in life. Under different circumstances it would be endearing and I would come to the rescue. If the one in need isn’t, you know, planning the disposal of a body in the woods. Shovel, bleach, I mean come on! Unless I’m being as prejudiced as Valdo? Judging a book by his Murder shopping list. I wonder with all the altruism I can muster if the man is but a common carpenter whose only wish in life is to offer his services to vacationers stranded in crappy cabins. A simple man just trying to make his way in the galaxy, like Boba Fett. 

“There was a delay. In _production_ ,” the shopkeeper emphasizes like his customer is too dull to understand such an advanced concept. The old geezer is probably used to different characters coming through his store with odd demands. The shelves behind his back look like a post office sharing space with a drugstore, with rows of brown medical vials lining the wall.

“ _Production_ ,” Geralt says. He’s not outright calling the old man a liar, but it’s certainly implied by the acerbic tone. ”You’ve got something better to do around here?”

“I’m only one man. You'd do best to call ahead with the specifics if you want to empty my storage.”

“There’s... certain repairs to be dealt with that weren't mentioned to me beforehand.”

For some reason the customer glares out the shop window at Vilgefortz’ fancy Miata by the pumps. He sighs. “I’ll need bindweed if the lakes are compromised, and Cat since we’ll likely be working nights.”

Guy wants a cat?

Olgierd motions a thumb behind him. “I only got what you see behind the counter. How about Kiss?” 

Did he say—

Geralt considers with his head tilted in thought. He nods.

Old Olgierd turns around and carefully plucks a dozen different vials from the shelf, storing it in a pouch. He hands over the purchase. Cat. Kiss. Must be code for drugs or for… essential oils? I didn’t know how Witchers maintained their strength back then, and the explanation ties back to my comment about Geralt’s immortality. You’d think his juice would run out eventually when the decimation of relicts robbed a Witcher of the life-sustaining genetic material obtained by processing parts of their organs. The kelpie spleen for increased oxygen storage, the heart of a warg for more efficient immune systems, and so on. Well, he was surviving, but he still needed a top off before the more strenuous projects.

“Triss never mentioned a list of demands longer than a month of Sundays... Is she waiting in the car?” Olgierd is edging over to normal gossip territory now, which is my back- and my front yard. “She better not be bothering my Iris.”

“No.” Geralt tilts his head almost bird-like, listening to something nearly out of range. “Iris is in the back with Ciri. And before you call child services, know that I wouldn’t have brought her if you’d been upfront from the start. Now can we stop with the chit chat and get on with the list? I want to get back before nightfall.”

The shopkeeper dips his head in response, sullenly accepting the rebuttal. Geralt politely mimics the action, sarcasm restrained for the time being. I start to daydream about how I want to proceed. Maybe we can have a luxurious coffee by the gas pumps, with shared milk packets and perhaps some cinnamon rolls? I can be resourceful when the situation calls for it.

Everything’s perking up to be a very interesting first date up until the point when Geralt turns around and sees who’s unabashedly spying on him.

The expression on his face turns from surprise over the fact that his Witcher senses neglected to pick up the presence of an eavesdropper (we get to address that later), to what can only be described as a blinking alarm broadcasting _murder! murder!_ from his eyes. The serial killer theory is sure gaining ground.

“Oh my god. Uh.” I backtrack in my afternoon plans. Actually, I backtrack across the store faster than I have ever backtracked, or walked forward, for that matter. I might have achieved spontaneous intangibility and backed straight through the soup can shelf, I swear to god. ”Oh, oh dear, I think there’s been a mistake…”


	6. The best snack I ever had

I bump into shelves that wobble, alarming me further with the confusing mix of dry goods, animal hides and nail buckets. Geralt follows, gliding through the aisles at a constant distance like a predator in the tall grass. Fuck, I’m going to get _pounced_ _on_.

My back hit a display rack loaded with fishing hats and novelty baseball caps. I squeeze my eyes shut to prepare for the bare-knuckle fist I have been expecting for years now. The hand bypasses my head and catches the swaying pole of the display, putting it back safely on the floor. He leans in until my back hits a wall and I find myself boxed in, chest to chest with the man who’s single-handedly going to be responsible for my martyr status as an artist who tragically died before his prime.

Geralt leans in close, chest pressed against me and growls in my ear in a frequency that only Geralt’s gravel-rough vocal cords can achieve: “Why are you here?”

Oh, fuck me, _fuck_. I can’t help it—heat spreads wildly from where his hot breath tickles behind my ear, going everywhere at once. Especially downwards, reminding me that my own treacherous body is not the best at discriminating between safe objects of attraction and bad ones—really, fucking bad ones. Geralt viciously presses his arm against the bag of chips between it and my throat. It’s not the life-saving air-bag I would’ve preferred. The bag _pops,_ releasing a puff of onion flavored air. I’ve been conditioned for life, cursed to pop a boner at the slightest whiff of chips and dip.

”Oh, I don’t know,” I laugh. “I mean, I certainly did not predict standing here with a stranger pressed up against me in the back of the clothing aisle, but I’m willing to adjust.”

Adjust my pants more like, heh. I’m dimly aware that Geralt scrutinizes every inch of my person; from the hairband to the watch on my wrist pinging with texts, to the fear chemicals in my perspiration; my desperately shaking knees and my hands haplessly fluttering as the bag slips to the floor. I am—I was—not a very intimidating figure. Geralt is picturing me walking out of Last Chance and making it about half a kilometer before I’m the all you can eat, tasty lunch buffet for eight different subspecies of relict. In fact, he expects me to step into the road ten minutes from now and get myself run over by a bicycle.

I’m clearly not poacher material. (Or Witcher material for that matter.)

“Who are you,” Geralt clears his throat, gaze skirting down my front with a promising ounce of uncertainty, “and what’s your business here?” There’s an aborted hand gesture, like he has to restrain himself and his newly acquired dad instincts from brushing the chips residue from my shirt chest. Realizing how odd that would be he returns his forearm back to my throat, god it’s like being accosted by a man-sized battering ram.

“M-Me?” I crack a self-deprecating smile. How does one summarize himself under threat of strangulation?

“I’m very grateful for being given the chance to apologize to you,” I start. ”I rarely get that chance, see, because I’m so difficult to catch. Hah. Proper introductions are in order but first I would like to extend my sincerest apologies to you and yours. Not that you care, but I really wanted to check you out—check if you were alright. Are you—?” I fervently pat Geralt’s chest, mostly to gain some much needed breathing room _._ “—oh you’re _fine,_ if you don’t mind me saying. I could bounce a coin off your pectoral and die from the ricochet. How are you feeling?”

Geralt blinks at me for a beat, deciphering the question. “I’m well. Answer the question.”

“Good, yeah, good. Good answer. Concise. Let me, um, let me get my thoughts in order, just a sec.”

I brush down my front, where I no longer feel the weight of Geralt’s forearm pressing on my throat. There’s a thousand ants marching across my skin nonetheless. Fuck, I’ve never been this off my game before. _What are you doing to me?_

I decide to blame it all on Valdo (when in doubt, portion out the blame I always said).

“See, my ex from college, he’s a certified asshole. You know the type? Self-entitled, holier-than-thou douche canoe? My best friend didn’t bring that into the equation when she invited him along on our vacation and gave him dominion over the car keys. Jesus christ. It’s aggravating what he gets his hands on. I swear I almost bit his finger off—” Geralt’s penetrating gaze has me realizing that I should cut this monologue short, ”Uh, well, that’s neither here nor there. A petting zoo was _not_ involved, no matter what you hear.” Another pause, another (the same?) questioning glare and condescending head-tilt. ”Fine! He took my lute, okay?! He took my lute. A good man knows never to touch another man’s instrument without explicit permission. I can’t fucking believe I let him come! And that’s—that’s not an euphemism.” It might be an euphemism.

My chest heaves from the exertion of talking so fast without pausing for an oxygen refill. I gradually become aware of the fact that I seem to pour my heart out in a very public manner. And that I’m less okay with Valdo’s presence on this trip than I knew.

”Phew,” I say and pretend to wipe my brow, ”I think I really needed to get that out there. Sincerest apologies for putting you through my personal shit. I talk a lot, but I’ve learned to tune myself out... Apparently.”

The side of Geralt’s mouth twitch and it relaxes his whole demeanor, but he does not voice his opinion on the matter _._ Feeling the pleasant after-effects of my adrenaline rush I recline against the wall, sizing him up under heavy lids. He’s just as compelling up close as he was as an apparition on the road. “I’m Jaskier Pankratz, by the way. I’m in a band, and you’ll be interested to know I’m single—“

“Try the other question. What’s your business here?”

“Didn’t I literally just say it? I’m in a band,” I repeat, looking into the man’s eyes for signs of brain trauma and finding a new reason for my heart rate to quadruple. His amber-colored irises are...very unusual. “We are on a working vacation—you should try it, sometime. Might not be as awful as you think, Boba.”

“You have no idea,” Geralt grumbles under his breath. He sighs, long-suffering (it’s like he can predict the future). “You’re a tourist. What, are you tired of life? Do you know what danger you’re in?”

Legal repercussions? My eyes widen in alarm. “No. Are, are you going to call the police? Does your friend need help with the hospital bills?” It’s not the first time I’ve bought and cheated myself out of a mess.

Geralt entertains the idea of informing me that the only law enforcement around is the one currently chained up in his trailer. It would almost be worth it to find out what my reaction would be. (Die, I would die on the spot.) He decides to poke me with the proverbial stick: provoke that 10 out of 10 reaction he receives when a civilian dares to talk to him.

“The police can’t save you out here.” He leans in and puts his hand on the display behind my head. He’s doing his intimidation tactics. (I fell for that schtick for like five seconds.) ”You want advice? You and your friends should leave. Turn your car around and go home or you won’t survive the night.”

“What are you on?” My blood boils, and I react instinctively. I use the adrenaline rush to jab a finger in Geralt’s abdomen. “Now you listen, I do not take well to threats!”

Geralt looks down on where my finger meets his tummy, one eyebrow raised.

“I’m not threatening you. I’m _warning_ you. No offense,” he has the gall to poke me back in my considerably softer abdomen, ”but you don’t know these woods. You won’t last a day out there on your own.”

Also true.

“Yes, offense! You’re offending me, and I take it! See, that’s what happens!”

Geralt’s only forgiving feature is that he seems to finding the conversation amusing, the fucker. And he’s a tiny bit cute when he can’t decide between scowling and laughing and ends up somewhere in between.

“What’s your name?” I blurt. I rather get punched in the face for the questions I asked than the questions I didn’t ask, or isn’t that how the saying goes? “I like to know the full name of the man who _warns_ me.”

Geralt takes a long ass time to process. When people demand to know his name it’s usually followed by a manhunt, or circumvented by Geralt using his Interpol contacts to show up with a fake ID and a badge. Or resulting in a restraining order. He can’t figure out what my deal is—is it so difficult to grasp that I’m just a perfectly normal person, down for a smooch right over here on this pile of jeans that’s been on sale since the late 70’s?

I arch an eyebrow in challenge and tell myself to be brave; fold my thick arms slowly and suggestively until they bulge in all the right places and strategically cock my hip just so. We’re equally tall, I notice.

I cheer inwardly when Geralt’s gaze dips down and then up with undeniable, pin-pricking interest that burns from my pinkie toes to my scalp. He clears his throat, then swallows thickly _because he likes what he sees_. Oh dear lord, _he likes me_. _Say you like me, sayitsayitsayit._

“It’s Grer...”

Geralt grimaces like he can’t fucking believe the betrayal of his own tongue, “ _Geralt_ ,” he amends through his teeth, he’s so flustered. Remember, he hasn’t had a decent lad hit on him in at least 150 years. The last full amicable conversation he had with a member of the human race must have been… never. You think you know cabin fever? Social ineptitude? You know nothing until you’ve spent 150 years living in a cave with bears with communal waterfalls and no wifi (or however a Witcher spends his time outdoors).

I school my face. _This is the best reaction I ever had to date._

“There’s no need to feel ashamed,” I lilt, “I’ve been known to be quite a mouthful myself, if you catch my drift.”

Silence. Dead silence. I know that has to be one of my cheapest jokes but some polite recognition would be nice.

“So, do you do this often?” I have to fill the sexually charged silence. ”Flirt with tourists? Do you live around here?”

“How you interpreted a warning concerning your safety as flirting is beyond my understanding,” he grumbles, although he doesn’t remove himself from where we’re standing nose to nose. His gaze bobs like a nervous tic down to my lips and back to my eyes.

_Oh, fun, he’s recovering fast._ I mentally dust off my plans for a date. A proposition to hire Geralt’s services for the rest of the week is perching on the tip of my tongue. I can already picture it. We have to buy nails. And measuring tape. And _rope_. “Is it? Who are you to—“

“ _Get. Off him._ ”

Ah, there she is. I was wondering what took her so long. I peer over Geralt’s shoulder at the fearsome heroine standing in the other end of the aisle.

“Oh, _now_ you decide to show up and rescue me?” I have no qualms shooing her with my hand. I don’t need a rescue mission. “Go away, cock— person I have a 100 percent platonic relationship with. This is a private conversation.”

Geralt scowls at Yennefer with the same intensity he used on me a moment ago, and my heart sinks. I resist the urge to call dibs through a megaphone (instead I repeatedly draw a finger across my throat) but luckily Geralt and Yennefer just continue to glower at each other like two gunslingers in an old western.

Geralt’s nostrils flare. Yennefer, deceptively calm, brings her hands up in preparation. She knows martial arts. And I? I know Yennefer.

“Will it come to fists?” I narrate, looking between them, because that’s how I disarm tense situations. I retrieve the bag of chips from the floor and start eating.

Geralt sighs his deep _you are all fucking crazy_ sigh and retreats with a last glare over his shoulder. “Think about what I said. Avoid the woods at all cost.”

With that unacceptable parting phrase Geralt stomps out of the clothing section like a bad stereotype of a villain disappearing with a sweep of his cloak.

“See you around, Grera!” Dammit. I pout at my unsympathetic best friend. “Must you ruin everything, woman? I had him right where I wanted him.”

Yennefer blows a raspberry. “I’m sorry I left you to fend for yourself for _five minutes_. Are you okay?”

I grin, feeling like I’ve just stepped off a roller coaster. “Yeah. All good.”

We clean the cabin to the best of our ability. You’d think dusting the mounted animal skulls was the highlight of our day (the cabin seems to share interior decorator with the Last Chance gas station) but the most daunting task proves to be the disposment of the carpet that covers most of the living room floor. It was probably a beautiful rug at one point in time. Now it’s faded and soaked in the same oily fats that stick to every single object in the house. I sneeze when decades of dust and probably asbestos are stirred up.

“They could at least have cleaned before we arrived,” says Fringilla, inspecting her fingers covered in a film of dust.

Yennefer doesn’t say that she rented the cabin in its current condition for a reason (that’s a good omen of what’s to come, though). “There’s supposedly a caretaker here who will drop by later,” she says offhandedly, “we can pass on our grievances to them.”

“A caretaker?” I ask.

“A caretaker.” She winks at me and refuses to elaborate.

Valdo has made himself comfortable on the stoop with his guitar, presenting as a tempting target when I come outside to shake the carpet. When I belatedly come back inside after my hasty retreat around the premises I almost trip over Yennefer.

She kneels as in prayer in front of some carved markings on the exposed floorboards. I don’t recognize the symbols as belonging to any written language, ancient or modern, and I instinctively don’t like their presence where we sleep. I crouch down on eye-level, catching Yennefer whispering some rigmarole under her breath.

“So… Whacha doing?” I singsong, intentionally pushing down a foreboding feeling. I do not want that shit in my house. I want a good night’s sleep tonight, for christ’s sake.

“It’s just a kid’s drawing,” Yennefer gently traces the scorched lines with the tip of her finger to show the outlines of what, with a little bit of imagination, resembles a stick figure. Something a child could’ve made in his Montessori classroom, if he devoted some serious elbow grease and late nights, and went by the name Damien. I shudder.

“Oh, goody,” I say. “More demonic children.”

Our sleeping arrangements consist of inflatable mattresses laid across the floor and burrowing down in sleeping bags. Confession time: I thought that the impenetrable darkness that occurs at night when you’re miles and miles away from a streetlight was just an exaggeration. Deep down I thought the pervading night of the outdoors was _not that bad_. Gone is the ambience of a city night, the silence with edges softened by the sound of passing cars and the neighbors' late night conversations. What I experience on the floor in the cabin is _holy shit, is this what it’s like sleeping in a coffin six feet underground? Is this how death actually feels like?_ It’s amplified by the soughing of the wind through the trees outside and twigs snapping in the undergrowth.

Much later I wake up blind in the dark from a confusing temperature difference. The screen of my dying phone, now at 10% battery, informs me that it is half past two. The phone shell is burning up as if it has been resting on a hotplate or spiked with electricity, but my fingers are cold. Could be a malfunction of the phone, which, great, just what I need. The mystery is solved when I encounter the wall of heat coming off Aiden’s snoozing form to my left. Like sleeping with a human space heater.

I shuffle an inch to my right, closer to Yennefer and the slight draft coming from the front door. Then I hear it: footsteps crunching on the detritus outside.

I lie caught in my sleeping bag, wishing my groping hand could reach through the fabric and grasp Yennefer’s. The footsteps enter the porch and stop at the door.

With a faint rattle the lock is turned. I hold my breath. _It’s the caretaker,_ I convince myself, _it’s just the creepy but ultimately harmless caretaker, bringing cookies. Bringing. Cookies._

The silence prevails. I hold my breath until the steps retreat, leaving no clue as to whom they belonged to. I have managed to stir some life into Yennefer when the new sound starts, this one loud enough to alert everyone: The visceral sound of chainsaws in the night, driving deep into my bones.

Someone’s out there, in the woods, conducting a choir of chainsaws. That’s what the locals do out here, apparently, when there’s no cell reception and you’ve watched your 90’s DVD:s down to nubs. I shudder and try not to mind-project the Texas Chainsaw massacre on the wall, or why not the Blair Witch project. This time, Yennefer grabs my hand. Well, she uses the hand-holding to drag me up and to the window, closely followed by a yawning Vilgefortz and an agitated, feverish Aiden wiping sweat off his brow.

The grimy panes reveal nothing beyond our own pasty reflections; we might as well be staring at ourselves in a mirror.

Back on the floor I zip my sleeping bag up to max and shiver back to sleep, marinating in my discomfort.


	7. Open season on Hipsters

  
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that _Tourists_ , migrating from their natural habitat (cities, offices and pubs) are a danger to themselves and to others. Thus on day 2 Geralt and his brother Lambert keep track of the campers from a nearby lake shore, hiding the skiff in the high reeds.

Lambert is exhausted and cranky from hunting down escape artist relicts 24/7. He uses the idle morning to snooze with his stetson shading his face and a straw of hay between his lips (it’s a reed and it tastes like sewer, but it’s the sentiment). His beautifully ornamented boots rests daringly on top of the skiff.

Geralt is exhausted too but at least he got his rest when he was feeding Ciri breakfast. (He fell asleep with his face in a bowl.) He maneuvers the boat with his poleaxe to an ideal position in the reeds and inspects the loud group of campers as they oh and ah over a small jetty. He observes the young woman from the store, with the raven-black hair and excellent fighting stance, saying a quick good-bye to a dashing brunette—me. Yennefer treks back the way she came, sundress billowing around shapely legs disappearing down a pair of sensible boots and a sloping sunhat obscuring her face. Geralt has to count on the forest around her to remain dormant during the day. And for her to not walk face first into the traps he set last night in a tactical perimeter around the cabin. _It’s not within his knowledge that as Yennefer treks through the woods she’s being observed by a barely self-aware werewolf._

Vilgefortz puts his foot on the spongey, rotting boards of the jetty, preventing Essi to run past him by holding out an arm. As the boyfriend to the group’s unofficial leader and lacking any proper function he’s taken on the role as the unofficial co-leader. Scoutmaster? Mom’s new boyfriend. He says things like “Mind where you’re stepping” and “remember your sunscreen”.

Aiden curls his lean torso into a sinuous corkscrew and somehow slinks past Will with the understated agility of a professional ballet dancer.

“Last in makes dinner!” He catapults off the jetty’s ledge with an impressive back-flip. The kid could be in a circus in a different life. I blink at the bubbles fizzing along his downward path, marking the moment down as officially the first time I’ve seen Aiden lighthearted—and the first time I’ve seen lake water sheer with delight, but that’s a thread for a different chapter.

The rest of the group doesn’t hesitate to follow. There’s a collective flinging shirts off and big, excited grins, like we’re allowing ourselves to goof around like kids. Soon the tranquil air over the lake is filled with ecstatic whooping and cannonball slashes.

Geralt’s (un-)trustworthy medallion vibrates against his chest, alerting him that there’s a relict somewhere in the vicinity. The Witchers will be working around the clock thanks to the campers, but he’s not optimistic. The situation puts the Morhen reserve one mistake, one untimely death from going up flames. (There I go again, foreshadowing.)

One of those mistakes and/or untimely deaths swims closer and closer to his hiding spot in the reeds. Wouldn’t you know, it’s the charming lad from the store, with the thick, strong wrists and graceful hands honed by thousands of hours practicing the string instruments; the lad with the genius disposition oozing out of his very pores and general sex appeal rendering a poor Witcher speechless.

Geralt stills and with a keen gaze he ‘evaluates my physique’ as my strokes slice the water in a fast and steady rhythm. I finally stop a short distance from where he’s hiding. I wipe my wet hair back and gasps from the exertion, my glistening lips hanging open to accomodate my large and eager appetite for oxygen—too much? Nah. Geralt's own breath hitches at the repeat confrontation with this epitome of raw sensual energy. Okay, I’ll stop.

Alternatively, depending on who you ask: a long-suffering, possibly prophetic sigh escapes him when the miry head of a drowner pops up about ten meters away from me—the stereotypical unsuspecting lead in this classic horror scenario.

I squint in the sunlight and wave my hand. “S’up, Aiden.”

The drowner wearing the face of my presumed friend disappears under the surface. I veer around, worried when Aiden doesn’t reappear after several minutes.

“Shit...uh, okay, stay calm, Pankratz. Remember the buddy system. You know what to do.”

I dip my face under the surface and try to spot him, revealing that I, on closer inspection, do not know what to do and I never had much more of a vague sense of the buddy system. Geralt’s eyes briefly consults the sky. He wonders how I even made it past adulthood.

Here’s another evolved relict for you. Drowners, or _muire d’yaeblen_ , are water-dwelling relicts believed to be drowned men due to a cunning ability to exploit their victim, assuming the face of man and pretending to drown in order to lure the victim closer. It wasn’t always like that. No, there were simpler times, when drowners just had to straight up kill a bloke for showing up at the riverbank. As I said, most relicts have crossbred and evolved over time, to better blend in with the modern world. You don’t hear on the news of relicts attacking people, do you? Well, they still do, all the time. They’re just being smarter about covering their trace.

Geralt taps Lambert’s shoulder.

“What?” Lambert glares under the brim of his hat.

“Drowners, doing a number on one of the campers,” Geralt murmurs. “Keep an eye on the perimeter, will you? You’re here to do a job, not work on your tan.”

“I was told differently.” Lambert massages his temples and curses the day he started listening to Triss ’my fingers tingles when I touch Eskel’ Merigold. Ugh. (Lambert has been allergic to romance for the last century and a half. Don’t even mention to him that Geralt occasionally shares their bed, he’ll combust.) His mood sours, but he gets distracted by Geralt putting down the poleaxe and silently switching it out for the rifle. “Aw, is that really necessary? They must be slow in this weather, and dumb. We can put down a fishing hook and make a day out of it.”

It’s true. Drowners are mostly nocturnal these days, and prone to lethargy in hot weather. Much like Lambert, here.

“Are you sure you’re not a drowner?” Geralt clears his throat to gain my attention without scaring the ever living crap out of me. He knows this is bound to end in tears. “...Jaskier?”

I look left and right for a moment before I locate the source. I meep. In my defence, a manly meep in response is not an unusual reaction when the Witchers are forced to interact with the public. Geralt sympathizes; he obligingly hunches his shoulders in order to appear smaller, and refrains from speaking until I have regained control of my bladder. It’s hard to ignore the predators circulating under the water’s surface, though. The tension bleeds down into his hands, coiling his coarse fingers around the rifle and thins his mouth in concentration. He raises the rifle and aims.

“G-Geralt, is it?” My neck prickles with fight-or-flight at the sight of the thing. An honest to good _real_ weapon, not a prop. “That’s an impressive friend you’ve got there.”

I barely notice the hard tug in my ankle and the nibble on my big toe. Hostile trouts are not a main concern at the moment. In fact, I just might prefer it, I think before the second tug pulls me under.

I choke, watching the cloud of bubbles rise to the glimmering surface of the lake. Praying I didn’t actually pee moments before. A shot travels by. The bruising grip loosens, and I desperately kick my way to the surface—but not towards the skiff. I flee, spitting and panicking, towards the bank.

Lambert regards my clumsy advancement through the shallows and seamlessly switches over to a smooth David Attenborough narration. “A nesting bloedzuiger leaves her younguns in the reeds. The prey doesn’t realize it’s fucked.”

He’s right. A bloedzuiger, a thick, stubby thing that looks like driftwood to the uninitiated, crosses my path. I trip over it; face first in the mud.

Geralt aims at the bloedzuiger. At least one dart pierces through the thick carapace, splashing me with guck. I continue valiantly to crawl on all fours over its stunned body, spitting and wiping the mud and the bloedzuiger blood from my eyebrows. The more I rub my eyes, the more it stings. Geralt considers tossing me a bindweed if the guck proves acidic.

“What’s wrong with you people? Leave me alone!” I grab a branch from the undergrowth to defend myself with. It’s a root, and it’s stuck, to this mother fucking uncharitable tree!

Geralt vaults out of the boat with understated grace. He slips a handkerchief out of his pocket along with the vial and approaches me like I’m an injured deer. ”Ssh. Come here.”

My protests are mostly consonants by then. “You shot me, and now you have the nerve to _shush me?!_ To think I was _this_ close,” I pinch the air between thumb and index finger, not knowing exactly where to look through the liquid obscuring my sight, my tears burn for some reason, “to ask you how your day was going!”

“I didn’t… Look, I didn’t mean to hurt you. There was a snake. On the log,” Geralt lies by rote, using his most careful customer service voice. His best efforts are apparently laughable, judging by how Lambert smothers a snicker in his sleeve.

Geralt gestures covertly at him to dial back the glee. The tourist is about to get his retinas melted off and Lambert’s laughing? He keeps a gentle tone even though the sight of me rubbing more acid poison into my eyes isn’t encouraging. ”Would you come here for a sec? You’ve got something on your face.”

I don’t believe a word he says. “There wasn’t a snake, I would’ve noticed. You shot a perfectly good log. What did that poor log ever do to you?”

I admit I’m not at my most logical when I’m stressed—and when I’m feeling a bit woozy and oh fuck it _burns!_ Geralt gives a blasé shrug, which my panic-stricken mind interprets as the callous response of a psychopath. As soon as my heels gain proper traction, I set off in a wild sprint.

Well. I stumble with a minimum requirement of coordination through the thicket growing dense near the water. It’s not the treadmill at the gym (which I of course use frequently, look at my calves). I look over my shoulder and I see Lambert standing up in the skiff (I thought I had made it further, what the hell) swinging a rope in like a lasso. God damn misguided Arthur Morgan.

It’s not… it’s not a dignified defeat. The rope lands around my shoulders and my knees give out a few seconds after that. I roll onto the ground like a loose bag of tangerines, spitting leaves and expletives.

Geralt and Lambert roll me over and lean over me with professional detachment, and Geralt, murmuring a curse under his breath, reaches for my shoulder with intent. I bat his hand with considerably less hand-coordination than one would expect from a trained musician.

“I get that the access to therapy is severely lacking in these backwoods... I can’t feel my face… why can’t I feel my face? ...but hunting perfectly innocent tourists… ugh, on their hard-earned holiday is not the sol… the solughn…”

I’m jumbling my syllables. According to Geralt, I squint near-sighted at the tiny pin of a broken tranq dart he plucks from my skin and then I proceed to pass out like a baby. 

_Hmm,_ Geralt summarizes eloquently. He has extracted civilians before, but they are usually aware of the danger they are in and more or less accommodating. This? This was the opposite of what he wanted.

Gently, very gently, he cleans the guck from my face with the handkerchief and plenty of water. He inspects the result for a beat, the drool in the corner of my mouth and the no longer fluttering eyelashes, and sends a silent prayer to a deity he doesn’t believe in that there’s no permanent damage done to my eyesight. A relict bounces back from the anesthetic in the darts relatively quickly, but humans react differently. Geralt leans in and carefully puts an ear closer to my nose and mouth.

Yep, I’m breathing at least. He pokes my cheek experimentally. By estimation this raw human should regain consciousness somewhere between now and… 72 hours? Sounds about right. He ends up stuffing a shock blanket under my head and sits down heavily on a rock, unable to look his brother in the eyes at the moment. (Shooting his crush with a tranq dart is not his finest hour.)

Throughout the centuries Geralt and Lambert have learned to roll with the punches, and to be calmly accepting of Murphy’s laws. They would’ve died of cortisol poisoning long ago otherwise. Lambert produces a wrapped sandwich (Geralt denies the half that’s being offered), smacks a mosquito off his neck and sits down to eat.

”How many times are we going to do this?’ The younger Witcher says with the fatigue of someone who’s been through the exact same scenario countless of times before. ”We rescue people who don't want to be rescued and then we lie to their faces. That’s 90 percent of it. The other 10 percent are trying to say thank you but they don’t know what for, and we can’t tell them.” Lambert frowns down at the tourist, doing a visual assessment of my personality based on my slack jaw and the wheeze coming out of my left nostril. ”Which one do you think he’s going to be? An ungrateful fuck or the rare thousand questions type?”

Not that Geralt bought Lambert’s dichotomy, but for once he hopes that I will fall somewhere in the middle. He doesn’t want to lie to a decent person much less than apologize to a pitchfork wielding whoreson. You know what was particularly embarrassing? People promising to name their first born after their rescuer, and then finding out that… yeah. Suffice it to say there weren’t many Geralts or Lamberts running around. Or, they are all in rocking chairs by now and married to Margarets.

“This could’ve been avoided if he’d just listened. Not that he’ll agree, oh no—he’ll blame it all on us. Ungrateful college kids,” Lambert laments. He’s stress-eating the rest of his sandwich.

“No,” Geralt responds at last, when Lambert is reduced to sulking and munching on the last mouthful bread and thus matching Geralt’s feeling of guilt. “We’ve met before. He reacted like anyone should with a remote sense of self-preservation.”

Lambert swallows. “What do you mean?”

“Weren’t you present? He can’t stand my face.” Geralt slants his mouth in a self-deprecating grin and gestures over his features in case Lambert has forgotten what centuries of unfriendly altercations does to a man’s appearance. _Any_ man, but especially a Witcher with the heightened but not perfect ability to knit himself together. He has no illusions of what most humans think when they see him approaching and he has made his peace with this fact. Yep, he definitely has made peace with it. The alternative would be devastating.

Lambert stalls and searches for a suitable antidote in his bag. A lesser known fact about Lambert is that he obtained his veterinarian degree last year, to better care for the relicts crossing their path. The risk of being his human patient was of course to be ‘accidentally’ neutered. “One, I think you’re being too hard on yourself there, brother,” he mutters and prepares a needle. “I think you’re handsome. Triss once said she tought you were the second most handsome Witcher—wait, I might be wrong about that. I think she meant me, which makes you the third. Still, not bad considering. Two, you’re dead wrong about why he didn’t want to chat with you.”

Geralt raises a highly sceptical brow. This ought to be good, even though he suspects it will be at his expense. “And you know the actual reason?”

“It’s not your appearance per se, it’s...” Lambert runs his gaze all up and down Geralt’s frame and wrinkles his nose.

Geralt looks down on his hands. “Thanks. I assumed it was just my face.”

“It has fucking nothing to do with your face! Shut up and let me speak.” Despite his harsh language Lambert can effortlessly slip over to a smooth as butter lilt when he’s bullshitting. ”You are a strong, healthy male, but you’re severely lacking in the confidence department and you’re out of practice. When was the last time you spoke to someone that wasn’t me or Eskel? You’d never come out of the woods if it weren’t for Ciri, and that’s been going on for three years now.”

Geralt sighs. It’s one of _those_ speeches. He pats his pockets. ”This feels like criticism. Should I write it down?” 

Lambert points the needle at me, and I swear he’s seen me on tv, ”Look at him. That’s nobility in this day and age. He has cues of suitors lined up everywhere he goes. He doesn’t need to lift a finger, and he doesn’t have the patience for you to pull your head out of your ass. The way you behave, like you’re not worth more than a can of beans and a fork, he can smell that shit for miles.”

Geralt sits in thought. What Lambert says has some merit, but he didn’t think he’d gotten that bad at communicating with civilians? Maybe he should spend less time in the outdoors, interact with regular people more, acclimate himself to them and their tastes since styles and preferences seemed to change faster than he caught on. He’s grown accustomed to living the hermit life, where 90% of social interactions were devoted to Ciri, 8% to his brothers and Triss, and 2% with squirrels, other assorted forest fauna, and Roach.

He prefers his current living arrangements, on the other hand; the distant but comfortable bird view of humanity. The peace and quiet, never underestimate its importance.

Lambert, ‘my work here is done’, adjusts the stetson on his head, pulls down the waistband of my trunks and stabs my poor buttock with a needle. I can’t do much—I’m paralyzed. All that’s left for me is to ponder the conversation I’ve been privy to.

Geralt modestly redirects his gaze to my face during Lambert’s administrations. It’s a pleasant face to return to. Soft skin, not a single worry line there, nor a scar or blemish. I do resemble a noble, with not a clue of the toils of a Witcher. He forgets sometimes how sheltered and pampered some civilians are—which finally makes my over the top reactions understandable. “He was terrified of the rifle,” he assesses with a defeated sigh. “And the bloedzuiger exploded in his face. I could’ve handled it differently. Could’ve—“

“Then he doesn’t have the stomach for the likes of you,” Lambert huffs, entertained by the memory of my undignified retreat. ”You’re practically covered in relict shit 24/7.”

Geralt looks down on his soaked clothes with a frown. Even he detests the stink of drowners, mud and sweat sticking to his attire, though he should’ve habituated to the smell a long time ago. “Shit.”

Lambert pats his shoulder in sympathy.

Fringilla picks the top card of the deck and carefully considers her choices. They are spread out on blankets on the porch after having retired from a couple of exhausting but satisfying hours by the lake. Now they’re just chilling with good music, beer and chips, enjoying the last hurrah of the setting sun, and playing card games like they’re 16. She pulls her cardigan closer around her shoulders and, since she has no clue how to win in this stupid game and really not care if she looses, puts down a Baron.

“What do I do with this?”

Valdo pinches the bridge of his nose, curbing a headache. “You choose another player to compare cards and the player with the lowest score is out of the round.”

Fringilla looks down on her Guard card. “Ok, in that case I fold.”

Ellen laughs. “No! It’s not poker.”

“Hey, guys…” Essi says warily and points, “oh my god…what happened to him?”

Valdo spots a disheveled, muddy folk singer zombie-staggering between the trees, swept in one of those shock blankets they give to victims at road accidents. Wait. That’s _his_ muddy folk singer.

“Don’t judge. You know he’s walked like that since March,” Ellen says.

Valdo shuts down the music and stands up, caught by a rare sense of guilt. He knows deep down that he should’ve looked for me, but he’d been caught up in his efforts to pretend he didn’t give a shit. “Where have you been?”

He gets the answer he deserves: more pronounced undead staggering, and a quivering middle-finger.

Ellen shuffles the cards. “Took you awhile. Where did you go?”

I glare at them all in disgruntlement for _they are the friends who abandoned me!_ My memories of the last three hours are foggy to put it fucking mildly (I have a fuzzy memory of being carried like a rug over someone’s shoulder), but I vividly remember waking up to find the jetty deserted and the lonely trek back to the cabin. Also, there’s mud drying in places where there shouldn’t be mud.

Now I let my partly paralyzed body stumble over a non-existent obstacle and crumble over the stoop like spilled soup, feeling disoriented, nauseous and like I could sleep for days.

“I met a doomsday prepper and a cowboy on my afternoon adventures,” I grumble, summarizing what I can recall, “who darted me and probably saved me from being eaten alive by an anaconda. It was unpleasant, you’re all selfish buggards. The end,” I glare daggers best as I can with a crushed Pringles chip stuck to my cheek. “Where’s Yenna? I demand restorative love and unconditional support.”

It takes Yennefer’s loving, slightly condescending presence and a steaming cup of cocoa to calm me down enough to talk about what happened, not that it leaves me with a warm and fuzzy feeling of validation. Absolutely no one believes there’s dangerous man-eating snakes in the lake—they find it more likely that I fell asleep on a rock, suffered a heat stroke and decided to embellish my close-encounter with a passing newt.

The shock blanket must have come from somewhere, though. I use it generously to burrow further down in my misery but everyone else gets a bit uncomfortable realizing there are armed strangers sharing the woods with them.

“Not to put a damper on our vacation, but can we consider the possibility that they were stalking us?” Fringilla says, ”or how do you explain how they got so close? What are they even doing out here? There’s no other properties around for miles.”

“They were trespassing, that was their first offense. Yennefer, you have to call whoever rented you this place and ask them if they have a problem with poachers in the area,” Valdo demands, apparently not aware of how ill-advised it is to tell Yennefer of Vengerberg what to do. He squares his shoulders and moves to give the impression that he’s fighting in my corner. I roll my eyes so hard it hurts.

“I’m pretty sure that we can handle a couple of peeping Toms by ourselves,” Yennefer murmurs distractedly, cat eye sunglasses on and nose buried in a book titled _The Poisoned Source_ by Tissaia de Vries. She looks very suave, like a bad girl version of Audrey Hepburn.

I’m hurt by her lack of sympathy in the wake of my near-death experience. Apparently everyone told her I had gone on a fun excursion all voluntarily by myself, abandoning _them_ and not the other way around.

“This vacation sucks,” I mutter.

Ellen pats my ankle. “Don’t be so melodramatic all the time.”

“You guys are not taking this seriously,” Fringilla looks disapprovingly at her. “You do realize we’re on our own out here? No one will come for us for at least two weeks if things escalate.”

“Whatever. I came here to do as close to nothing as humanly possible, and that excludes obsessing about worst case scenarios that will never happen,” Ellen demonstratively twists open another beer bottle by sticking it into the unseeing eye of Greg the undead rocking horse, and that’s the end of that argument.

I sigh and stretch out with Yennefer’s fingers in my hair. In my mind the wobbly image of Geralt returns, and the mumbling conversation I overheard. My mind reels. _What the hell is a bloedzuiger? Why are two men walking around with tranquilizers, shock blankets and veterinarian degrees?_ I know what DWM stands for, ma’am. I’m an intellectual. There’s also something deeply, deeply amiss in my psychological makeup because why, peering up at my capturer, did I find him _cute?_

I play with the string to my shorts, caught by the restless, urgent sensations that accompany one of my most dangerous states of mind: curiosity. Pre-stage to obsession, if I’m not careful. I have been known to get a bit… attached to my subject of interest in the past, for reference see how one man managed to bring back the renaissance lute to modern audiences and make a household name for himself.

I wonder if there’s a chance we will bump into each other again. The man must have his own living arrangements somewhere around here, right? His own little vacation home, or tarp thrown over some branches at least, with the tin foil hat resting on a nail. Either way, we need to have a serious conversation about boundaries, and the importance of communication. Maybe the shopkeeper has Geralt’s contacts.

“Do we need anything from the store?”

“No,” is the resounding answer.

“We just went,” Yennefer says.

“I won’t be sober enough to drive in at least ten days,” Valdo vows, sounding un-genuinely sympathetic. He reclines with the intention of resting his head on my hip, which earns him a shove and a crick in the neck that hopefully will linger for days.

“I didn’t ask you,” I retort.

“Besides, Jaskier, you’ve got everything you need right here,” Aiden says, shaking a match and inhaling on a joint he produced without anyone noticing.

People cheer like they never left the college dorms. That’s my cue to withdraw under my blanket and surrender to sleep.

The second night in the cabin I sleep soundly through the distant noises coming from the lake. If I hadn’t I would’ve identified a few of those noises as a boat engine and Lambert spitting curses as one of the bloedzuiger spawns tries to bite his arm off. I don’t hear Eskel laughing or the splash when his brother push him off the skiff.

A couple of miles off, Geralt sleeps with a children’s book across his face. 


	8. Crushed tacos

  
Geralt and Eskel are two burly timber workers straight from my worst Smokey the bear Wet dreams; now rigging traps in the valley to safely capture the relicts that breached the magically enhanced border. These last couple of days (and nights) they have been busy with repairs or simply exchanging the equipment built by Iris and Olgierd von Everec. These elderly custodians of the Morhen woods should’ve been talked into retirement decades, perhaps centuries ago, in Geralt’s hindsight. Walking between checkpoints revealed damages far greater than reported. For the first time in twenty years there are civilians in the area, or in a language relicts relate to: Bitesized, squishy chew toys. Probably squeaked too, like the rubber duck he bought Ciri when she was a baby. Figuring out how often an infant needed to bathe was considerably easier than the situation at hand. Safe to say he stands undecisive when I come trudging down the mountain path with a sprightly, cheerful gait, crooning a beloved song that has touched the hearts of many radio listeners over the course of the year.

Geralt remembers: he heard me sing on the car radio on the drive up here. It’s a bittersweet song and my last recorded single that is best appreciated in its acoustic version. I wrote it at the piano at 3 AM, an empty tumbler of scotch leaving circles on the case, my heart filled with regret and stomach filled with dread. (I might have followed it with a voice-cracking rendition of _All by myself_ ). It ended up as the last single I wrote before the big creative drought, but this morning it serves to remind Geralt to an uncomfortable degree of the conditions of his lifestyle:

”Are you crying over your sad fate?” My voice carries over the weaving grass in the light warm breeze. ”The world is changing, the sun is setting and the vodka is coming to an end. Now stop feeling sorry for yourself, talking and regretting won’t get you anywhere… let's go south as soon as possible, to those wild countries. I could go where you’re going, I could keep you company…”

It’s a song of farewells and the passage of time. Somewhere in this very meadow beneath the Kaer Morhen ruins, the ashes are spread of a great man by the name of Vesemir. A man Geralt grew to love more than he loved his own mother; their relationship was as complex and irrefutable as the relationship between a son and his father. Vesemir has been gone for a long time, but returning to Kaer Morhen makes time irrelevant and the wound fresh. Geralt draws a shuddering breath and senses Vesemir standing by his shoulder, humming with the song with his old man baritone.

Eskel gives his brother a pat. ”Look alive. We have a griffin incoming from the north.”

Geralt’s gaze re-directs to the sky. From a great distance the griffin could be mistaken as a common bird of prey but up close it’s difficult to explain away the lionesque body, shaggy mane and the wing span strong enough to carry off a sheep back to its nest. It’s a young Griffin going by the irregular patches of short mane and that bodes trouble. Young bucks are solidary, able to travel long distances in search of a female. The rut means a brainless male high on testosterone, ready to fight competitors indiscriminately. A swipe by the massive talons and the soft, innocent abdomen Geralt got to poke his finger in the other day will be torn to shreds.

The Witcher is moving before his brain has caught up with his legs, instincts driving him towards the unaware fool crossing the heath in full sight. There’s a bright, attention-drawing dress shirt in my right hand, and predictably the griffin’s head rustles like that of a bull, indicating the moment it’s thick brain registers the threat.

Geralt pulls his poleaxe loose from his back without breaking stride. A dazzling smile crosses my face when we are close enough for our eyes to meet (Ah, my Mystery man!). It’s so contradictory to how our last meeting went that it sends Geralt stumbling over air. Well, over my dashing beauty. The important thing here is the end result: The Witcher goes down hard; on his hands and knees in the dirt.

Geralt feels like this is an unprecedented incident and he would rather wish to be somewhere else. Not even when he was an over-eager, gangly child in training did he suffer such a devastating blow. Yet here he is biting the dust, with the ghost of his old teachers and the whole squad of fellow students laughing their asses off in the background.

“Are you okay?” I holler, so focused on Geralt that I don’t notice the horse-sized predator swooping down behind my back, talons ready to strike and seize.

Geralt draws his arm back with a grunt and throws the poleaxe through the air best he can from the awkward angle. The spear proves enough to interrupt the griffin’s trajectory. It takes off with an indignant roar, and my attention is drawn upwards in surprise. Geralt, inspired by countless wrestling matches on this very field, barrels forward and pummels his shoulder square into my stomach, unable to think of a better way to divert my attention.

I go down with an _oomph!_ and find Geralt’s crushing weight on top of me squeezing the air out of my lungs, like the best part in a romantic comedy.

“It _is_ you,” I press out, gaze wandering to the sky above his shoulders to locate the trajectory of the spear, “Hey, what were you throwing? Are you an athlete? Why were—" I’m intercepted by Geralt’s fingers squeezing my cheeks together.

Geralt’s gaze automatically ticks down to my squished lips. Our bodies are close enough that he can count my individual lashes; close enough for his straps to dig into my chest and there’s Hip & Groin Contact happening that I wasn’t informed of in advance. I try to wiggle, resulting in my cheeks going even ruddier than before his fingers squeezed the life from my blood vessels.

“Uh. I’m sorry. I’ll just...” Geralt removes himself with haste, giving me room to slap a hand to my chest and breathe sweet, sweet oxygen. I’m okay, but Geralt looks nothing short of terrified; eyes widening as his actions catch up to him. His brow furrows as he takes in the suspenders curled up like deflated snakes by my hips, and the little hat that flew off my head in the collision and now rests in a sad, sunken sponge cake shape in the grass.

”My beret!” I wiggle my fingers in its direction. Geralt hands it over with a dazed expression.

”A beret?” He says it like its a forbidden word. The sun is beating down on his neck. ”It’s 25 degrees out.”

”I know. It’s my Hermes summer beret. I was sponsored or I couldn’t afford it, it costs more than twice my rent.” I put it back on at an angle, pretending like it doesn’t make me sweat like a pig in a sauna. I point at the empty hair where there should be a functional brim, at least. ”For shade.”

Geralt bites his lip. “Why are you dressed up?”

“Oh, you know how it is in showbiz,” I stall.

“I don’t.”

“Fair point. You dress like a thrifter. I bet you spend days sleeping in the same underwear when you’re out here camping. Hey, I bet you believe that deodorant is optional when you go to the store to buy canned beans and beer—ow!” I laugh and fall over to my side as he cuffs my head with his hand.

I’m not wrong, though. Geralt is a thick, heavy blanket of enticing scents that I hate myself for responding to. I hope it’s the way he looks at me that makes me want to wrap my legs around his hips and crush him like a taco shell, or we would have to question my kinks.

Despite my small protest Geralt confiscates the stylishly patterned shirt in my hand before I manage to do any more damage. It doesn’t escape his attention that there’s a nasty sunburn to my exposed shoulders that looks like it stings and chafes. The camera in the grass is the only thing I packed: no water, no backpack. From then on Geralt considers me to be the worst prepared hiker he has ever seen in the history of hiking. (That’s a biased opinion and I’ve gotten much better, honestly!)

“I—,” I draw out and smack my dry tongue, looking like the worst dehydrated liar ever. “I was going for an intimate little photo session. For work reasons? It’s actually a thing—the label expects me to keep up a social media presence, and I have to portrait a certain, you know, persona. Sitting in the wilderness and looking just the perfect mix of disheveled, and pensive and fashionable...as in fashionably sponsored. That’s what pays the groceries at the end of the day.”

I think somehow, due to how Geralt constantly has to alter his appearance in order to not risk being chased off by the modern equivalent of pitchforks, he understands my predicament. His hand extends in a gentle offer I am grateful to accept, but the assistance is interrupted by a piercing cry from the southwest, alerting him that the griffin is returning and it’s pissed.

Geralt curses under his breath—these civilian close encounters are the worst part of his job. He’s not looking forward to applying the ugly, unethical process of convincing a victim that what they thought they saw/mauled them was the product of their own imagination. I am therefore manhandled to my feet and twirled accordingly to not face the relict.

It’s not ideal. We’re in the middle of a heath with no cover and Geralt needs to distract me long enough for Eskel to capture it, which won’t be done in a twinkling.

“Are we dancing?” I ask dryly, trying in vain to understand Geralt’s odd herding behavior. I let my hands rest on his waist.

He snorts. “No.”

I spot Eskel in the distance. Eskel has made use of my time spent immobilized to sprint to the other end of the valley. Distance, a key factor here.

“Ah, look,” I wave, “Who’s your friend?”

“Eskel, my brother.” Geralt guides me backwards until I’m strategically placed next to a hidden trap with motion sensors beaming in a vertical direction towards the sky. He silently calculates the blast range of the net. It would be incredibly unfortunate and bad for busy should a civilian get caught in the same trap as a royal griffin. I dare a second attempt to look for the brother. “ _Don’t!_ Don’t look at him. He’s… he’s shy around outsiders.”

For real? ”That’s quite the understatement. I’ve never seen a man run that fast at the mere sight of me. I’d be offended but… _you_ ran towards me, didn’t you? I’d say the scale still tilts in my favor.”

Geralt looks amused amidst his tactical considerations, smiling shyly. I decide that I just can’t rest until I have befriended this peculiar charming man who seems to exceed all my first exceptions of his character.

“I have a list of non-invasive questions,” I start, counting off on my fingers while maintaining a perfectly reasonable, non-threatening approach. I would make an excellent investigating reporter in my humble opinion. “1. Are you hunting?” I need to evaluate the poacher theory for my own safety. ”2. Are you wildlife conservationists? Biologists? Are you conducting fieldwork right now, like tagging the birds and stuff? Oh, can I watch? Unless these are bear traps, because I feel—“

“Stand here.” Geralt shepherds me with firm hands on my shoulders. He repositions me two important decimeters to the left. An animalistic roar that also sounds a bit like an menopausal eagle erupts from further down the valley. Eskel has managed to hit the griffin with his crossbow.

“No,” he grasps my chin for safe-keeping when I try to look. He edges closer, bringing himself to the center of my attention. “Not a hunter,” he continues in an sultry, intimate murmur that has me hanging on every word _and_ his moving lips, ”I protect the animals. Keep them safe. I don’t harm them unless it’s my last resort.” His eyes burn and I blink. Understand that for some reason it’s important that I know and accept that he’s a friend of the animals. No Smokey the bear-traps here.

”And the bears? The bear traps?” My jaw moves, brushing against Geralt’s fingers. The sensation of being held still while trembling with the adrenaline rush fit for the moment sends an additional spike through my heart.

Geralt’s mouth slants wryly. ”Bears are your least concern.”

“Uuuh. B-Bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica,” I stammer. The Office left permanent damage. This man leaves permanent damage. _What are you doing to me?_

“Geralt!” his brother shouts a warning.

“Wait, Jaskier, your... your eyes.” Geralt’s voice goes urgent and a bit desperate. “You should… you should look at me with them more often.”

As far as compliments go, I’m speechless. Yeah, let’s go with speechless. “Thanks?”

The shadow of an advancing prehistoric predator grows over us. The camouflaged trap blinks a promising red, but no net or spell releases from the trap.

Geralt gathers my head to his chest, shielding me with his shoulders. ”On your knees. Now!”

“Hey, I want to see!“ I struggle to pull the hat off, wanting to see this magnificent bird of prey that’s apparently attacking us now. Geralt looks around for a nifty rock.

Feeling hot and bothered I sift my fingers through my hair, finding straws of grass and even a few bugs and berries. Downy fragments of feathers dance like snowflakes from the sky as the griffin soars into another broad loop.

Geralt looks guilty, brushing his hands on his pants. ”Are you okay?”

I inspect the fluffy little feather clinging to my finger. ”So let me get this straight. You’re capturing birds with very sharp beaks and they have a particular hankering for my peepers. Please. Didn’t I say I’m a musician with a social media presence? I receive more vicious attacks on the daily.”

Geralt’s hands twitch impatiently as if fighting the urge to toss me towards the tree line and hope for the best. I wouldn’t mind a second dance though. This is nothing short of exhilarating!

”How about this—I volunteer as your assistant. What do you say? You will have to stop manhandling me, of course, but there’s no reason why we wouldn’t get to that later,” I wink.

Geralt questions my common sense, recalling our previous encounters. He suspects a theme of me putting myself in harm’s way without a second thought: from spying on him in the Last Chance store, to taking a trip with my ex whose face I can’t stand, not to forget the time I ended up in the middle of a dozing nest of drowners. Did I even care for the consequences?

”I _shot_ you with a _tranq dart_.” He half-suspects amnesia as an unfortunate side-effect. He can’t be the only one seeing the pattern here? He wants to grab my shoulders and shake some sense into my head.

I shrug. “Life is short, and I’ve wasted so much time already. Allowing me to pet a wild bird would make for an excellent recompensation, don’t you think?”

Over my shoulder Geralt tracks the progression of the fight, now escalating to the griffin grabbing Eskel by the arm and carrying him off in the air. The huge creature drags the Witcher in circles over the heath, all the while Eskel struggles to unleash a strap from his belt.

“I couldn’t hear you,” I grin. ”Repeat after me. Jaskier, I would be honored to have you as my assistant! You’re so generous, and gorgeous. A true philanderer! What’s the equivalent for friends of the animals?”

The griffin crashes to the ground in a ball of feathers and fur. Geralt watches his brother disappear under the massive bulk. “Now’s not a good time, Jaskier.”

“Wait, not philanderer, that’s silly… philanthropist is the word. Because I’m a friend of humanity.” This is the most fun I’ve had in ages, and I kinda want to pinch his non-existent love-handles to keep this conversation going.

Eskel evades the griffin’s sweeping attacks by means of leaps and full-body rolls, goal set on the crossbow guarded between lionesque paws. Geralt retrieves my camera from the ground and steals the memory card in one inconspicuous action before giving it to me. (Of course I immediately noticed the sleight of hand, who do you take me for?! I just didn’t feel like commenting on it, right that second okay.)

“Oh… okay then. Thanks.” Dejected I hang the camera around my neck.

Eskel rolls on his back (griffin paw pinning him) and expertly fires a tranq dart right into the relict’s neck. Geralt releases a relieved sigh, and the majestic creature sags in the grass with an exhausted grunt. The griffin follows suit.

Geralt of Rivia straightens his back. It’s up him now to successfully remove the civilian from the scene.

”How about a scenic route through the woods?” He herds me into a hurried, entirely faux-casual stroll towards the trees.

In Geralt’s mind it would be very time-consuming to locate, subdue and release me after I inevitably step on a snare. Guiding me home, on the other hand? Efficient. Strictly professional. Geralt refuses to acknowledge the fact that there are instances where the Code coincides with what he wants, aka. spending more time with me under the guise of work.

”Just to make sure. You are offering to walk me home?” I ask. I have reason to be skeptical here. I have no reason to hope.

“Tell me which direction your cabin is and I won’t bother you.”

“That’s not what I meant. You’re not bothering me.” I look around for recognizable paths, trying and failing to remember how I got there. “But you’re not wrong. What’s the deal with all these trees? I mean, when does pine classify as an invasive plant? The abundance is downright offensive.”

Geralt grunts a non-verbal smug _Told you so_. His shoulder brushes mine as the trees grow more dense. I laugh nervously. “Does this mean that you’re aware of the, um, traditional circumstances usually involved when a guy walks me to my door? While I’m in my finest clothes, I might add. Does this count as a date?”

There’s a long, long pause. An interim of silence, if you will. As we walk, with our legs. He lets me walk first through a narrow passage between the rocks and I bite down on my lip. Rejection is easier to bear when you don’t have to look at each other, but I rather skip the awkwardness that would plague our long trek. I should’ve thought of that sooner, shouldn’t I. I lift the suspender hanging from my hip and anchor the strap back over my shoulder, wondering how I look in this state. What he might think of me. I resettle the other suspender too so that I at least have a proportional butt (that seems like a thing Geralt would compliment me on. Like, ’I appreciate how your limbs are attached to your body, Jaskier. Keep it up’.)

“It’s not a date, if you don’t want to,” Geralt says when he’s side by side with me again, the word sounding foreign on his tongue but there’s no harshness. There’s reassurance instead of pressure and it makes me feel like I’m deflating with relief and floating with happiness simultaneously.

“Nah, it’s a date. I don’t make the rules, Geralt,” I tease, and I might even hip-check him a little. I play with the camera hanging from my neck and cast a curious glance at his photogenic face. “Or you could be in the pictures with me. Would you like to be behind or in front of the camera, Geralt? Would you like to pose with me?”

“ _No_.” With passion.

“Ah. Sounds amicable enough.”

He narrows his eyes at me, like that empty threat would throw me off.

I smile back pleasantly. “You aren’t fooling me, tough guy. You want your picture taken. You _need_ your picture taken.”

I’m rewarded with another twitch in his cheek. “You’ll need this back,” he retorts and flicks the little memory card at my chest.

*

“And then he warned me about the traps for the gazillionth time and ordered me to stay closer to the cabin,” I reiterate to Essi with frustrated passion twenty-four hours later. I impatiently (some might say compulsively) flick through the pictures on my camera, chasing the elusive glimpses of _Geralt_ , the hypervigilant and camera shy sasquatch, rarely caught on tape. “I mean, does he get off on telling me to be safe? Oh, gosh, that’s his thumb. What an absolute noob. Shouldn’t he know how to work a camera if he’s doing field work? Ah, here we go...”

Essi strums her guitar. She’s already had this conversation with me at 10 pm, 8 am, 1 pm, 3 pm... ‘Did he at least give you his number?’, ‘Did you decide to meet up somewhere?’ And so forth. She’s an angel. A very patient angel.

“You should meet up somewhere romantic and watch the sunset together.”

I get a dreamy faraway look in my eyes. “The sun began to set while we walked, in fact. I think I saw fireflies. The trees are so beautiful and old in these parts, Essi! Large bastards, and the creek, it’s so soothing, just walking along and listening... And he showed me orchids! These tiniest, tiniest little orchids! Oh, it was a magical, Essi. The best first date I ever had.”

Geralt says that 99% of this story is unrecognizable by now considering the fact that I add on to it every time I retell it, but he’s wrong. I wouldn’t fabulate lies. If I convey what I felt at the time then it’s not a lie, is it. I inconspicuously flick forward to a pic that makes my pulse race faster for numerous indiscernible reasons.

“Look at this,” I show Essi the photo where I’m reclined against a rock, one knee pulled up, and I’m throwing the camera a haughty look that just exudes raw confidence without being on the nose. “I’m quite proud of how it turned out.”

Essi nods. “You look like Paul McCartney having a silent orgasm,” she comments. She takes over the camera. “Oh, what about this one.”

I’m pretending to walk out of frame, peering over as if to say _Why are you still following_ _me, you absolutely stunning piece of garbage?_

I exude a confidence I don’t feel in real life but hey, that’s the image I was going for. I hope Geralt didn’t get the wrong impression. Essi’s brow furrows when she notices me twitch.

“Woah, Jaskier… Have youactually stopped and looked at some of these?” She asks, shaking her fingers and making a hissing sound. “This one for starters?”

It’s me, for the hundred, thousand time. So many pictures of me and it’s making me anxious—it was all spotlight on me for hours and Geralt never voiced a complaint. On this particular photo he has caught me laying on my back in the grass, face towards the sun, heavy lids sinking low over my eyes and fingers lazily stroking through my hair. I look debauched, with my chest hair on display above the singlet and sweat stains under my arm pit. I look disheveled, and yet… the picture has been taken with consideration to detail and composition. The subject looks cared for, in good hands, and my chest swells with a sweet realization. Geralt took care to notice when I let my guard down and managed to not accentuate the ugliness within my flaws.

“I almost look decent,” I say, my face flushing with heat. 

“He spent three hours with you in the woods,” Essi says with a smug glint in her eyes. “I bet he thinks you look more than decent.” She laughs out loud. “What the fuck?”

Yeah, so… I’m stretched out in the grass, hand in a swooning gesture across my forehead like I’m some damsel in distress who moments before met a Big bad wolf on the path. My hooded, _begging_ gaze searches for Geralt’s through the camera lense—not without a glint of good humor in my eye thank god. It worked to the _desired_ effect, so to speak, going by the down tilted angle of the camera, the center zooming in on the flash of skin where my shirt has ridden up to reveal a hint of treasure trail. I wish I had the camera ready when Geralt went rigid and fell backwards, even mimicked the swooning gesture with his free hand, but I was too busy laughing at his antics.

“The light was fading. We got tired,” I defend. Most of the goofy poses that followed were sadly not caught on camera but hey, that’s what memories are for. It’s preserved for me and Geralt, whenever we like to revisit that evening.

Valdo snorts from where he’s lounging on the couch. “I don’t know why I’m surprised over the fact that you went off alone in the woods with a stranger. You never had much self-preservation instinct, but this has to be some kind of record. You are aware that he’s the same man who _shot you?”_

“He _sedated_ me,” I correct, let the idiot believe what he believes, “There’s a _huge_ difference, Valdo. And I didn’t have to activate my self-preservation instincts,” I try and fail to keep fondness out of my voice. “Geralt kept watch.”

Valdo laughs, harsh and unkindly. My irony flies over his head. “Jesus christ. That right there, that’s your problem! You put people on a pedestal, and then you act pissed when they aren’t measuring up to your standards. One day your blue eyes will land you in real trouble, Jaskier, I mean it.”

I bristle. “Yeah, right. You would say that.”

In fact, Valdo failed to meet my perfectly reasonable standards for what constitutes a decent person, so there. I should say that. I just have to rid the uncomfortable feeling that... he kinda makes a sense? I have been known to be a bit naive in the past. But I have a good feeling about Geralt and it felt good to follow my guts for once. 

“Shut up, Marx. There’s nothing wrong with a good old vacation hookup.” Essi offers me a high-five.

 _Romance_ , I correct in my mind. _Vacation romance, mm, yes, that sounds right._ Every encounter with Geralt has left me dizzy and giggly, no alcohol required. I relaxed around him. He was kind, even when his wry humor surfaced, which I loved. Even when I was paralyzed he made it real difficult for me to succumb to actual fear. Even when he was guiding me around on the field _literally_ telling me where to stand I felt more comfortable in his presence than I ever had with Valdo. Huh, I never thought of it that way before.

Ellen saunters into the room dressed in swimwear and brandishing a towel over her shoulder. “Let's get this party started. Who wants to go skinny-dipping?”

The sun is setting. Maybe we can make it to the lake before nightfall, or maybe we’ll be wandering aimlessly in the dark and wish for our deaths to be swift. Who knows. Time will tell.

(It’s the latter, it’s definitely the latter.)


	9. M for Monsters

“There’s storm lanterns in the shed,” Yennefer says without looking up from her book. She has been unusually boring since she decided that restoring the cabin to its former glory needed priority over fun excursions. The cabin is decidedly weird; maybe it’s rubbing off on her.

The book she reads so intently belongs in the master bedroom where I wouldn’t even be paid to spend the night. That’s how you get visited by little ghost girls in the middle of the night. She has treasures laid out on the dank bedspread on the bed, mostly worthless junk like a science book from the nineties and a spool of sewing thread. It’s like the family who lived here moved out in a hurry, not bothering to pick up what slipped off the moving boxes. Yennefer has never been known for her sticky fingers for useless trinkets before, so this I would like to put in the category of _no, thank you_ and move on with my life.

I almost brain myself walking past the mounted wolf/dog/mastodon head on the living room wall when I saunter back from changing out of my clothes to swim trunks and a long sleeve.

“Ouch. Bad form, Cujo, bad form.”

I rub my head and sit down on Yennefer’s lap. “Was this in the brochure?”

I rest my legs on the armrest. If my butt crushes her she will simply pinch me and shove me to the floor. I have sisters with my permanent bum imprint on their backs and I wear the corresponding scars from being yeeted across the living room.

Yennefer turns a page. “What brochure.”

“The one you…okay, so how did you find this place?” I wrinkle my nose as I get a closer look at the book binding. It’s wrinkled and leathery with hairs everywhere. “Ew. Why is there a five o’clock shadow on this book?”

Yennefer closes the book on my nose and puts it to the side. “Because it forgot to shave. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.” She combs her fingers through my hair, tugging lightly at the tangles. Oh, I love when she touches my scalp—people are allowed to do that more often.

The lake is impossibly blank in the moonlight. Our jolly progression enters the cliffs, laughing and singing and lanterns lighting up the path. Yennefer jumps up on my back and I pretend to stagger off course.

“You’ve put on some weight since we last did this,” I huff.

She cuffs me over the head and hugs me tighter as we careen down the beach. I rustle her as we go, and down, down we go until we reach the end of a strip of rocks. Yennefer slides off and takes her boyfriend by the hand. She takes her comforting warmth with her as they wander off together.

I hold up the lantern and look out over the lake to see if I can spot the other shore, but in the twilight I can hardly discern the trees on our own side. A mist spreads over the bank as the ground cools and spills over the water. It’s a basic natural phenomenon I have never encountered before seeing as I’m city-raised, and the strangeness of it has me full body shuddering. I wonder what Geralt is up to tonight. I can’t exactly send a ‘You up?’ text when we don’t have power or cell reception.

We decide to collect driftwood to light a pyre—that way the ambience will be on point when we are skinny dipping. I mean, I’m all for partying like it’s 9 999 BC. Embrace the outdoors, kids, it’s the cradle of humankind.

“Did you really see those anacondas in the water?” Aiden asks, apparently having trailed behind me on superlight feet.

I peer up at the stars and think of feathers raining from the sky. I can’t shake the feeling that there are more to the Morhen lands than meets the eye; secrets hidden in these woods. There’s a reason Geralt pilfered my memory card, and I pray it’s not illegal. “What do I know, really? We’ll probably scare them away when we swim.”

“We don’t need to swim,” Aiden shrugs. “We can sit by the fire and tell ghost stories. I can tell you the story of my life.”

I laugh hollowly. “I can tell you that I haven’t written a song in three months.”

Aiden glances at me from the corner of his eye. “I will help you figure it out,” he vows darkly, and he doesn’t sound particularly happy about it, but there’s a brutal honesty there that doesn’t contain a grain of malice other than the implied _you’ll let me be your friend and help you out, or else._

“Okay, but… Why?” Aiden has never shown any interest in me before. We are acquaintances who stand each other.

Aiden nods thoughtfully, like he’s hearing what isn’t spoken.

“You’re a good friend, Jaskier. Loyal to a fault. Yennefer vouches for you, and that should be good enough for me. Besides, Yennefer believed in me and my crazy back when nobody else would. The least I can do is to believe in you and your snake stories.” He lights up a cigarette.

I don’t know what to make of that, or the unexpected lump in my throat. “You believe in my snake story?”

Aiden licks his lips and looks solemnly at me for a beat. “Uh, no,” he admits sheepishly, “but hang in there, brother.” 

I muster a thanks. “It’s the thought, I guess.”

The flames dance frantically against the sky a moment later. We have probably built the bonfire too high, but its heat spreads to everyone and envelops us in a safe and cosy firelight. Vilgefortz plucks Yennefer’s book from her hands and begins to read:

”The _Kikimore, insectoid._ The Kikimore worker is not a cockroach nor a spider, but perhaps a hybrid of the two. They swarm the lair of their queen, dutifully bringing in fresh kills and stopping intruders that come near the colony.” He chuckles and leaves through the book. “Is this a storybook about monsters? It is! Listen to this, a werewolf, the hideous creature—”

Right then, a mournful howl rises from the woods. Everyone wonders the same thing: are there wolves in Morhen?

Yennefer pokes the fire with a stick. “Read another one,” she demands.

Will throws her a look, but continues. “This looks like it’s been added recently. _Muire d’yaeblen._ Drowners, we call the creatures of the night, that appear on the banks of ponds, lakes and rivers. In the old days it was commonly thought that these creatures were drowned men somehow risen from the dead to prey on the living. This opinion has recently been proven false by the Kaer Morhen research team, for the beasts are in fact another subspecies of relict. The drowner is able to wear the face of a loved one for a short period of time, enough for an unsuspecting victim to examine the presumed corpse of a person. Since they are nocturnal creatures we consider them close to harmless during the day, but nighttime is another matter. Their hunting habits are the most compelling reason for our strictly upheld curfew.”

Yennefer exhales a shuddering breath, as if an invisible belt around her lungs has loosened. A silence befalls the group.

“Morhen,” Ellen echoes. “That’s the name of this region, isn’t it?”

Everyone instinctively glances around, over their shoulders. Even I feel a chill run up my spine as my brain conjures up the notion that we aren’t alone out here. I’m afraid to look over my shoulder, of what I will see when I peer too willingly into the dark.

Will closes the book. “As I said. Stories.”

Yennefer bristles. “They are not stories,” she states, “There was a research team here, two decades ago, and they stayed in our cabin.”

She drops the stick, making particles from the burning wood dance in the flames separating us. Her eyes are glistening in the dark.

”Do you want to hear a real ghost story?” She asks, and everyone leans in further to hear. ”Twenty years ago to the day, there was a massacre here on a small team of researchers specializing in rare species; species believed to be extinct for hundreds of years. Four people disappeared in the span of a night, leaving nothing but traces of blood behind. They were reported missing to the authorities, but so far the search has yielded no results. Their bodies were never found, believed to have been teared apart and eaten by animals.”

”How do you know all this?” Ellen asks, sharing my bafflement.

”It’s not hard when you decide to look.” I can well picture her at her computer, reading obscure news articles with a tumbler of whisky in her hand. Like me, she has a tendency to go too far, too deep in whatever interests her.

It suddenly strikes me as odd that she arranged the trip to begin with. To be honest, I had gotten so used to handing over the responsibility of Everything, from negotiating for a decent paycheck, choosing venues, to essentially planning the rest of my musical career, that I forgot that Yennefer of Vengerberg never commits to something without research. Renting a place without vetting it first was wildly out of character for her.

“Are you saying you knew about the state of this place beforehand?“ I ask. ”Why didn’t you tell me?”

Yennefer barely looks at me. She shrugs, and I’ve never felt more removed from her. I don’t know what I did wrong? When the hell did we stop talking to each other?

There’s an awkward silence around the campfire. Fringilla pushes her feet together and burrows her shoulders, increasing the distance to her friend. ”I always knew you had a morbid interest in disturbing things, but really, Yen.”

Aiden glances up from where he tries to lit his fiftieth fucking cigarette by practically burying his face in the roaring fire. The flames lick and cling to his knuckles and long, nimble cello fingers, which must be a trick of the angle. Or the guy must lack pain receptors from so many years in front of a string instrument. ”It’s fucked up,” he calmly wets his fingertips and blows on them, ”I like it.”

”What’s everyone’s theory?” Essi wonders. ”What do you think happened to those people?”

”Wild animals. You said it yourself—it’s the most likely,” Ellen decides.

”Boring,” Valdo says, elbowing me in the ribs where I sit and stare at my hands. There should be an instrument in my lap but there’s not. I forgot and Yennefer hasn’t badgered me once. ”I think someone came down with a serious case of cabin fever and turned on the others. Psychotic rage, killed the whole bunch.”

”You would know, wouldn’t you,” Essi quips, borrowing my phrase from before. I think she’s picking up on how often Valdo and I needle each other. She looks curiously at the book disappearing into Yennefer’s backpack.

“What’s your theory, Yennefer? Did you find any clues in the cabin?”

Yennefer looks at her, surprised that someone has caught on. “Not enough to form an opinion of my own, no. What do you think?”

Ellen answers for her. ”They were searching for creatures believed to be extinct. Like, prehistoric animals or creatures preserved in myth like the Loch Ness monster. They found what they were looking for…” she lowers her voice and brings her lantern under her face, “... _something sinister got to them_.”

Her sister laughs lightly and stretches her neck to look over the still water and its perfect reflection of the night sky. Night has snuck up on us, the full moon and the fire the only sources of light. She gives my wrist a comforting squeeze. ”Do you think it’s still out there, the monster that killed them? I mean, nobody has seen Nessie for a while.”

”Maybe it was Jaskier’s snakes all along,” Valdo says with a snicker, arm coming over my shoulders and tightening. I feel smothered between them. And guilty for feeling like that. “No, I spoke too soon. I think it was your hillbilly stalker.”

In college I always got caught up in my arguments with him, and it’s remarkably comfortable to fall back into old patterns. I’ve got my debate-partner Essi shoulder to shoulder, and I still remember Valdo’s embarrassing secrets and I’m not afraid to use them. On the other hand, he knows all of mine. For some reason, though, he’s holding himself back, keeps it civil and waits for me to recover. In fact, he keeps handing me all the little victories and looks pleased when he does, hand skimming over my shoulder, glittering eyes. I’m preoccupied wondering why the hell I’m letting Valdo rest his hand on my knee, when I finally gather the courage to look across the dying fire. Yennefer’s spot is vacated. She’s gone.

I rise to my feet, not that it will give me better night vision. Two people are walking towards the water for a midnight swim: Aiden and Vilgefortz, already pulling their shirts off their backs. She’s not with them.

“Where’s Yennefer?”

Fringilla’s mouth thins with irritation. “Fantastic. She went back to the cabin without even bothering to tell me. Come on,” she encourages the others, “I’m sick to death of this cold.”

Dear reader. The most basic rule of all horror movies is to _never split up._

Ellen stretches and stands, yawns and beckons her sister to follow. Valdo and Essi give me hesitant glances as they stand up obediently and trail after Fringilla.

“Jaskier—you’ll let the others know we’re leaving?” Ellen calls over her shoulder.

“But she didn’t bring a lantern...” I sigh in defeat. At least they left me with a light source. “Sure.”

Will and Aiden are undressing by the water. The moon blushes at all these pale cheeks competing for the limelight.

“Have you guys seen Yenna?”

"She probably went back,” Will says. He strokes his shiny wet hair over his scalp and looks rudely good with not a thread on his body and the starry sky in the background. He puts his foot on the slippery rock in the shallows. “Just a quick swim, and then I’m heading back too.”

He bites down against the cold and ventures further out, putting his hands down on the rocks to prevent himself from slipping. “It gets better once we’re past that rock over there,” he gestures in encouragement to Aiden, who’s looking like he’s caught between a rock and a hard place.

Aiden’s olive skin looks deathly grey in the moonlight. “How— how long has she been gone?”

I shrug, feeling crappy for not noticing. She was putting out all sorts of strange vibes and what did I do? I got sucked into an argument with Valdo Erectile dysfunction Marx. “No idea. Twenty minutes? Half an hour?”

The three midnight swimmers (three? My tired brain struggles to remember who the third one is) stand uncomfortable in the chill water. Wait. Three?

Aiden hesitates. “Uh. Jaskier. She told me to tell you—“

He’s cut off by Will and the bloodcurdling scream he lets out, staring at the third swimmer like he’s seeing Death. I raise the lantern in time to watch the light illusion slip from the flayed skin, the fish scale arms hanging abnormally long with its talons half-emerged in the oily water, the bulging eyes and the razor-sharp, glinting piraya teeth when it sneers at the harsh light. A drowner in its true shape is not a pleasant sight. Not even drowners themselves seem to think that.

There’s no time to react—we’re not on human ruled territory here. This is Monsterland; the land of nightmares and myth. The ancient creature lunges forward, it’s lank body weightless in the air for a beat before it rips into Will’s face like it’s a cheeseburger at 3 am.

“Drowners!” Aiden bellows. He roughly pushes me in the other direction and heads to Will’s aid. “Jaskier, run!”

I catch on; turn towards the lake and scream from the top of my lungs, repeating Aiden’s distress call. “ _Drowners! Help!”_ Adding, “ _Geralt!”_

My distress call echoes over the lake. From the woods, the pack of wargs howl in sync, excited to join the midnight hunt (I swear Beann’shie heard and recognized Geralt’s name).

The drowner lifts its jaws from Will, blood pooling from the corners of its mouth as it zooms in on me. I barely have time to react before it engages in another elastic jump and lands on agile legs, cutting off my escape route. I cry out and scramble backwards over the rocks in my effort to escape, but there’s no use. I’m mercilessly dragged over the cliff, down to the shallows.


	10. College kids

Geralt pours the store-bought Cat down his gullet while the boat engine is still roaring. He has the tail of his poleaxe meet the head of a drowner before he’s even out of the skiff. A routine undertaking; or it would’ve been, if it weren’t for the fact that the screams of the campers died down more than twenty minutes ago and he can already feel the effect of the weak potion leave his system. He quickly chugs another vial.

Lambert fumbles in the darkness with his own pouch. He’s tired after several nights of no sleep and shouldering the responsibility over the eight civilians. _Seven_. Down to seven civilians. He smells blood in the air, distinctly human, and my scent is thick in the air—so is the stench of my fear. He chances a glance at the suddenly tense line of his brother. Lambert knows a thing or two about loss. He wishes he’d answered this distress call on his own. 

The moonlight confirms the identity of the lifeless body drifting in the shallow water. Geralt wades and stumbles. He hastily lifts the body to hold above water, two fingers pressing over the pulse, searching for a sign of life.

Human physiology is generally easy to detect, hearts pulsating like a train over railroad tracks. Lambert has been there before, retrieving his lover’s remains, fingers digging around the noose. The body temperature is another clue. Lambert doesn’t need his medical expertise to know that the body in the water is hypothermic, pale and unresponsive. He raises his revolver when a drowner crawls out of the woodworks, putting two tranq shots in its throat.

Then the Jaskier impersonator in Geralt’s embrace decides to take a nib. Sharp teeth gleams from snarling gums, but Geralt’s reflexes are faster. He rises quickly and holds the relict at arm’s length for Lambert, who shoots it with a relieved laugh bubbling from his chest. Damn, these fucking relicts and their tricks.

Now let’s switch perspective, shall we. From the trees four misguided tourists return, unable to comprehend the scene.

Valdo crams his knuckles against his mouth to stiffle an agonized moan. His lover is dead (just when he thought we would reconnect, what a bummer), and the worst part is that he saw this coming and tried to _warn_ me. He _saw this shit coming,_ you know? He’s of the firm belief that he’s an exceptionally receptive person, and he can’t think of more than once or twice in his life that he’s been wrong. _Know thy self_ is artfully calligraphed across his chest to politely inform others of his predisposition—his yogi loves it judging by the double-takes when Valdo meditates shirtless (and he meditates shirtless often).

Flaws? Of course his corporeal form has flaws, what is he, Jesus? 1. He sings in the shower. 2. He spends too much time volunteering. Occasionally he hits people with his car, but he implores you to consider this: karma. Jaskier (me) might really be a Sinner with a big S. Left his shower running, tortured puppies with pellet guns, there was simply no way of knowing. You have to trust what Mother Universe is telling you, is what Valdo is saying. Valdo stares helplessly as the white-haired, real life Jason Vorhees of Friday the 13th murders poor unsuspecting Jaskier in the most degrading manner known to man, and he curses his foresight: he knew how this would end from the moment he spotted this lowlife on the side of the road and stepped on the gas.

The cowboy spins the revolver in his hand before holstering it, in a way Valdo has only seen in Clint Eastwood movies, _the sheer disrespect for the dead, it’s disgusting_. Valdo has never been so close to pure evil before. He spits. The lob lands on his loafer.

He meant to do that.

“You’re wasting ammo,” the white-haired Vorhees says. He dumps the body in the fishing boat and covers it in tarp like it’s just another day at the murder factory. Valdo guesses that there’s a second location for the permanent rest. _What kind of sick murder cult??? How dare these drug peddling backwood bloody hoodlums dispose of Jaskier Pankratz like he’s fish innards??!_

The cowboy sluggishly drags Aiden’s body by the ankle. He’ll probably mount Aiden’s head above the fireplace in his murderhouse and make it sing catchy tunes. “Oh come on. You can’t imagine how satisfying that felt after all the hurdles those kids made us jump over. Did you know that Adam Brody-looking guy went out in the woods and spent three hours masterbating a stone throw from an Alp lair? She didn’t want to risk a sun burn, that’s the only reason he’s alive… let’s say I’ve had a long day.” He peers out over the beach. ”Where do you think they went?”

For a horrible moment Valdo is convinced that the man looks straight at the boulder he’s hiding behind. Essi whispers: “I thought you said you went meditating.”

(Lambert pulls in a big breath.) ”HEY, COLLEGE KIDS!!” The murderer calls out with a deafening volume ending in a voice-crack, ”COLLEGE KIDS, YOU THERE?”

Essi presses her back against the rock. ”Oh shit oh shit oh shit, what do we do?!”

”Aiden was only shot once,” Fringilla is grasping for straws. She’s not bothering with the tears streaming freely down her face. ”He might still be alive.”

”Are you fucking kidding me?” Ellen wheezes. She has her sisters shoulders in a vice grip, ready to evacuate. ”Those fucking psychos,” her voice cracks with a sob. ”they _killed_ them. They’re going to kill _us._ ”

Valdo’s image has been tarnished. Slandered. He’s in shock.

Essi pulls at his shirt sleeve, ”We have to get out of here, come on!”

Valdo feels the soaked fabric between his thighs beginning to stick to the skin. He must have pissed himself without knowing it. He squeezes his legs tighter together and gestures awkwardly for the girls to go ahead, being the chivalrous knight who will save Aiden from the psychopaths. No, absolutely not, he humbly shakes his head at Fringilla, he’ll do this on his own.

He watches the girls sneak into the woods, returning to the pitch black dark but not before the heads of the murderers snap up and spot them. Now Valdo knows what warfare feels like—the sacrifices you have to make. He’ll go a different route, okay, he’ll crawl down and follow the beach and no one needs to know because they will all be dead.

His arms and legs shake almost uncontrollably as he inches forward. A few ten, fifteen meters and he’s sensing victory, on the verge to set off in a sprint, when there’s a faint groan, barely audible over the quiet glucking of the water. He blinks, discerning the bleeding, weak man clamoring to a rock.

There’s a recognizable wheeze. “V-Valdo…” There’s just a slab of meat where his face used to be. One of his eyes, it’s… not there. Valdo has to close his own in order to not hurl. The Vorhees are right there, a short distance behind him. They’ll hear. Valdo’s hand reaches for a rock. Vilgefortz has seconds to live, anyway.

“I’m sorry, Will.” He nears Vilgefortz, soaked knees finding purchase in the crevices. Vilgefortz grasp him by the wrist. Resisting. Valdo grits his teeth. “Fucking stop… I’ve got kids back home. I’ve got fans!” He feels himself slipping in the silt. Then—his head explodes in pain.

Aiden and I run heedlessly through the woods, wet and scared and bereft. Despite the chill it’s bareassed Aiden who navigates us by the flicker of moonlight reaching us in patches through the canopies, guiding me over roots and rocks.

I try to slow us down and hiss when my hand comes in contact with Aiden’s skin. He’s burning hotter than a furnace. “We need to get back to the others.” 

“I know, but I promised Yennefer to keep you away from the cabin tonight,” Aiden responds, and I’m so done with being babied all the time. It ends here; it ends tonight.

But Aiden is shaking, sparks flying from his fingers—he never was very good at containing his emotions, but _come on, sparks?_ A few minutes earlier he had grown an open flame from the palm of his hand, throwing it into the drowner who was dragging me across the beach. I was pulled free with the stench of cooking fish in my nose, and thus I had my first encounter with magic. 

I nod mechanically, because that’s the polite thing to do when you suspect one of you is crazy but you’re not sure who. “What’s in your weed? And when did I digest it,” I add, knowing I have seen the same shit Aiden has seen and this is _real_. When I rub my fingers together I can still feel the scales I scratched off the… the…. drowner. I can still hear Will as he was torn to pieces. Bile rises in my throat. I turn around and throw up on my shoes.

“Ugh…” I wipe my mouth with my sleeve.

A high-pitched squeal erupts from the dense darkness—a bird? A boar? My brain doesn’t have the reference frame for it, but every cell in my body covers in fear. I instinctively know that there are predators out there prowling in the dark, and there’s an appallingly high probability that they prefer fresh meat over over-cooked fish.

“Run,” I wheeze, gesturing wildly for Aiden to move. ”Run!”

Darkness is no barrier for a Witcher with a keen sense of smell. The scent reaching Geralt’s nose is pungent, reeking with wet fur, and bears its own identifying markers. The fact that his old friend Beann'shie has decided to hunt him tonight shouldn’t surprise him the slightest, considering she’s known for tracking her adversaries for weeks without break (he should know). She's a ruthless and intelligent creature, and apparently she can hold a grudge. Geralt sharpens his hearing and listens for the two humans running through the woods like home delivery pizzas on legs. Magic seeps through the breeze, a lingering taste of smoke, fire and burning skin, and that surprises him more.

One of the campers isn't as innocent as he seems, Geralt concludes with a sigh. _Oh, joy._

His sarcastic inner monologue (I’m convinced that the man _dreams_ in sarcasm) are interrupted by the warg barghest hybrids, appearing out of thin air with snapping maws and charging him from three directions at once.

Geralt deftly avoids their attack, poleaxe swinging fast and effortless in his grip. He manages to cuff one of them over the head, having it shrink back with a pained whine. He’s at disadvantage: his code prevents him from actually killing these creatures or he’ll risk the extinction of the entire damn bloodline—the entire species. With no more potion at his disposal he’s sure to tire before they do. The last vial wasn’t even potent enough to earn the epithet of potion. Just a last big _fuck_ _you_ from old man Olgierd.

Geralt runs deftly through the forest. He curbs the pack’s enthusiasm by dealing out punishing blows to their weakest spots. Their enraged snarls are deafening, bouncing off the trees and cliffs along with his own feet. He can no longer hear the civilians, and the low-toxicity, subpar Cat in his system is quickly diminishing his night vision not only back to his usual faculties but worse. There’s a pain in his head; a queasiness to his stomach, and he can’t hear Beann’shie. That means the old Alfa has found a more interesting prey to pursue.

She always managed to figure out his weak spots.

We’re running. Aiden looks down on his scorched palm as the last of the flames dies down mid-sprint, face contorted in pain. Darkness descends on us like a starved predator. Aiden’s head snaps up in alarm and he grasps for my arm:

“Shit. Stay close to me,” he urges, and then he—

Disappears. Like, beamed up by aliens, _disappears_. I run a few, 15 meters or so, crashing through the undergrowth on momentum, realizing he’s no longer running at my right and there’s no sounds behind me. I slowly turn, staring through the moonlight back towards the thick copse of pines I just left and the shape, the size of a bulldozer; oily black carapace gleaming in the moonbeams; antennas reaching two meters hanging from it’s horned head. Aiden is hanging off the cheliped; the thick, horned arm piercing through his stomach.

The monster expels a high-pitched tone, and pins Aiden to the ground as it advances towards me. It doesn’t have to crab-walk more than a couple of steps, Aiden dragged in the detritus with errant sparks uselessly jumping from his limp hands, before its antennas are in my face. The antenna touches my scalp and I unapologetically quiver in fear as it blindly examines me. 

Slowly, it pushes me backwards, step by step maneuvered by the antennas, before the forest floor abruptly disappears under my feet. My vision blacks out as I’m pushed down into the hole, a hole dug by zealous kikimore workers.

I desperately clamor for purchase in the mass of web and detritus, praying it’s not the snapping of my vertebrae I hear but the split and cracking of branches accompanying my descent. My harsh breathing is echoing in the tight compartment. I still can’t see. The kikimore nestles in the entrance of the hole, spreading its body like a lid. Although, it isn’t nestling. It comes crawling down for me and my tasty flesh. 

The moonlight doesn’t reach down the hole; I have to settle with the terrifying sounds of the kikimore pressing its body down the shaft inch by inch: _Scrape scrape, hiss hiss_. I think there’s branches in my hands, or bones—oh, do not let it be bones. I don’t want to end up another carcass deep in a kikimore’s lair. The cobweb is strong enough to act as rope, which means I can theoretically use the ’branches’ as rungs.

I put my feet on the lower ’rungs’ going against every nerve in my body screaming at me to _don’t go the fuck down there, you don’t know what’s waiting_ , but I have no choice, I want to _live_. The _hiss scrape hiss_ encourages me to keep lowering myself down the hole. The caress of an antenna encourages me further, I’m so far down now that the dirt walls form a tube and I’m gasping for oxygen. There’s a side tunnel in the wall which I try on for size, but there’s no use. Another meter down and I find a tunnel to fit my size. I put my feet through it and slide in on my stomach, coughing as dirt rains down from above.

That’s when the fear really hits: I’m alone in the dark, and I’m going to die.


	11. Don't be that guy

I cover in the hole. The kikimore’s screech echoes in the main tunnel. I startle and bump my head in the tunnel roof, but nothing else happens. Not even the antennas will reach me in here. I’ll suffocate before then. Yay for small mercies.

I have no idea how much time has passed, could be for five minutes or an hour, when a beam of moonlight reaches the wall in the main tunnel. Another full minute of counting down, until I drag myself out of my hiding spot. The moonlight reaches my retinas enough for me to discern the collapsed cobweb. Fuck. My rungs. My rope. I guess the kikimore’s absence counts as a win.

I experimentally test the give of one sorrowful entangled bone. It will be a challenge, but there might be enough of the stuff left for me to find purchase. I climb, swearing up and down that I from now on will spend more time at the gym (a gym) and less at the pub if I only make it out of here before the monster comes back. This was _not_ in the initiary, Vengerberg.

After I pull myself out of the hole I rest on my stomach with my feet still dangling, exhausted and relieved. Fucking shocked. I honestly didn’t believe I had it in me but I did it. I got myself out of there alive. Aiden’s fate seeps back into my consciousness when the last of adrenaline evaporates. Replaced by terror and tears. “Aiden?” I call. “Oh god, I’m so sorry I couldn’t... I’m so—”

I’m answered by a rustling in the foliage. It takes my teary vision a second to readjust, to understand what great big lump protrudes from the dark. A hulking wolf head, with ears slicked back the size of my forearms. Her lips curl back in a demented grin, revealing needle-point canines dripping with saliva.

“G-good doggie,” I stammer.

The old warg queen snarls in offence, and I get the message loud and clear. She’s not a good doggie. Not a good doggie, at all. I moan as I realize that I have to go back inside the hole. ” _Oh fuck_. Not again...”

Geralt finds me seconds later. He runs to intercept Beann’shie, sending his poleaxe in a harsh projectile through the air and perforating her ribcage. I cover my face with my arm as she leaps, but thankfully most of the warg bulk is re-directed by the poleaxe. She skids in the undergrowth and turns on Geralt with a bloodied grin.

The warg queen is not the youngster she used to be, but she’s feral and demented by age and disease. Beast and Witcher roll in the detritus, roots constricting Geralt’s movements and digging into his spine when she pins him down. He parries, but can’t stop her canines from sinking into the sleeve of his glove. She tears until he feels the sprain in his shoulder.

Geralt would’ve used Igni, but he can’t cast a Sign without the support from elemental energy in the forest and potions in his veins or he’ll be too weak to continue the fight.

When the warg goes for his throat he grabs her by the scruff and pushes back with sheer will. He needs the tranqs on his belt, but she’s constantly intercepting his moves, her drooling jaws half an inch from his face. Her canines sink into his neck and I let out a shout, despite it not being my throat under those teeth. I’ve never felt more useless to help.

Assistance arrives in a flash of uncoordinated limbs and fur, practically leaping over my hiding spot in the moss and rocks. The ex-cop who’s far from half the size of Beann’shie even in her werewolf form. Agent Renfri Nivellen tears through the warg’s scruff with her teeth, using what she got.

Beann’shie in turn clamps her massive jaws around the lycan and tosses her through the air. Geralt makes use of the distraction. With his last strength he grabs the poleaxe stuck in the warg’s chest and drives it through the warg queen’s heart.

To Geralt, the outcome is a failure to adhere to his code. He’s also bleeding profusely from the bite in his throat. He turns the cadaver over on her side one-handed, the other hand pressed to his neck along with a handkerchief. He produces a dagger from his belt, strong and shining in the moonlight, and flips it in within his hand with practised ease. Warg heart equals improved Witchers, remember, don’t let it go to waste.

The sound of the blade being punched through skin and my rapid pulse in my ears are suddenly the only sounds in the dead still forest. Geralt hesitates with his blooded left hand pressed to the warg’s fur, a glance in my direction with a silent question.

”Phew. Uh.” I don’t know how to react. There’s a limit to have many near-death experiences a person can have in one night. I slump further down in the detritus, hand to my chest. ”I’m alive?” It wasn’t meant as a question. 

”You’re alive,” Geralt confirms in a strange, quiet voice like a voice he would use on a quiet night in front of the fireplace when the kids are asleep. ”Did you crawl from there?” He throws a glance down into the den of the kikimore. The tunnel in which I hid like a coward.

Uh, he’s making me say it out loud, isn’t he. He’s really making me say it, though I’m covered top to toe in dirt. ”I hid, mostly. In the tunnels.”

”You’ve got good instincts.”

I let out a huff and try to wipe the snot and the tears from my nose with my sleeve. ”I don’t. I really don’t. That’s the antithesis of what I am, actually.”

”You would’ve been dead if you didn’t,” Geralt decides matter-of-fact, and it feels like small but significant recognition.

I can’t think for a moment, processing that. ”That’s… that’s nice, but I know what a coward looks like.” I can’t speak for the warm feeling spreading in my chest, though.

Geralt addresses the werewolf like he’s talking to a coworker, speaking with the same calm, warm voice he used with me. ”Bring back the other one? He’s not far.”

She nods like she understands, and disappears out of sight. 

I watch as Geralt proceeds to cut a deep incision in the warg’s chest—like a very unsanitary autopsy in the middle of the woods—and crack open the ribcage with his bare hands. My stomach churn at the sicking, squelching sound, but it’s the deep-dive of Geralt’s hands disappearing into the cadaver, and then… and then the bloody fingers he’s suckling in his mouth that put dancing spots in my vision.

I suspect he’s putting me through this unappealing dinner show to spite the perceived detestment I have for his trade? His boat session with Lambert comes to mind. Geralt needs to test the theory, wants me to crack. _Will I still be interested in coffee and cinnamon rolls after having witnessed him in this state, stuffing internal organs in his mouth, in the skin pouches he makes and hangs off his back? Interested in fucking a hunter who spends a considerable amount of his life bathing in this shit? In this nightmare?_

That’s a lot, _a lot_ to ask of a person before the second date. I keep my head between my knees to stave off the nausea and the vertigo. Concentrating on counting my fingers and toes methodically. Convinced that I must fall short in his eyes.

*

Ask her three months ago, and Yennefer couldn’t in a million years expect to end up on her knees on the floor of a cabin she hadn’t stepped foot in since she was 7, performing a ritual according to the instructions written on the last page of a hairy book.

Yet here she is, like a teenager bringing out the Ouija board at midnight to entertain her friends on sleepover night: there’s even a circle of burning candles and our sleeping bags pushed back to the corners. In the center, resting on the carved symbols, is my lute. I guess it serves some special meaning; le piece de resistance.

She puts the pocket knife aside, pushing back the shame she feels for damaging the smooth walnut body of my beloved instrument. Sacrilege, she has performed sacrilege on our Friendship and she doubts I will ever forgive her.

Dust rains from the ceiling as Yennefer repeats the magic phrases while Essi, Ellen and Fringilla are doing their best ignoring the slithering shadows on the walls and frantically search for the car keys to get the fuck out of there. The boys are dead, the locals killed them on the beach is the consensus.

Yennefer doesn’t think I’m dead—she would’ve felt something at the moment of my death. Aiden and Vilgefortz on the other hand… her bond to Will was never strong to begin with but now it’s alarmingly faint, like a flickering fame, and Aiden, her confidant and true friend, the only person who knew her secret, is lost. _She_ did that, and now I’m the last one left to save from the monsters keeping me captured. ‘ _Witchers. Evil incarnate,’_ old mr. Von Everec spat when he handed her the keys to the cabin, ‘ _They thrive on the persecution on the likes of you and me. I will slow them down for you, make them hurt, but you have to finish it.’_

The Book handed to Yennefer as educational reading material stipulates that _Witchers_ are ‘unscrupulous scoundrels without conscience or virtue. There is nothing more repulsive than these monsters that defy nature and are only capable of taking lives.’ This is not recent entries, but old knowledge dating back centuries. Yennefer has been handed a legacy. After the ritual she’ll be morally obligated to eradicate the Witchers from Morhen, as the new guardian of these woods.

Yennefer puts her hands on the floorboards and the old inscriptions there. She’s been given a tight timeframe to ‘twist the lid’. The _Chaos_ lies in wait underneath, in a vessel in the bedrock. She hopes, for my sake, that she has the right twist of the wrist.

*

Running for your life really takes it out of you. 0 of 5, would _not_ recommend. The reward is promising, though. When I awake in the morning it’s on a divinely comfortable mattress, with my nose buried in a pillow that smells like that special someone. I hug the pillow with my eyes closed. Oh, 800 thread count how I’ve missed your soft embrace. A perfect remedy for my aching muscles.

I hum in satisfaction and blink my eyes open, only to end up face to face with... an Egyptian mummy?

The mummy is sleeping soundly, with wheezing air coming from his nose. After a few seconds of examination I recognize Vilgefortz, even though his head is completely encased in gauze.

My recollection of the night returns. The attack by the lake. Kikimore. Aiden. Field autopsy on warg cadaver. Then the exhausting, numb trot through the woods with Geralt carrying Aiden over his shoulder and a sack of intestines over the other, looking like… looking like he was carrying two sacks of intestines, like Santa’s backwoods cousin. The warg cadaver was left there for her pack to find, but parts of her caught a ride on the boat across the lake.

A jeep took us further up the mountain and I fell asleep in the passenger seat. In summary: I’m somewhere with Vilgefortz, Aiden might be dead, and... monsters are real? Monster are real. Oh shit, monsters are real, monsters are real…! I roll over to my other side in order to extract myself from the bedsheets, and this time I scream - it’s a survival reflex - because Valdo is standing by the bed like some lobotomized, sleepwalking ex-boyfriend who’s decided to kill me in my sleep. He has a patch of gauze taped to his temple, supporting my theory.

“Julian,” he says hollowly, “you’re awake.”

We’re back to Julian, are we.

”What are you—are you sleepwalking _?_ ” I gather the covers to my chest, hoping he’s just wandered in from a different room. Would be creepy if he had been staring at me as I slept. ”Not to be crude but what the fuck are you doing here?” I didn’t even think he would be on my side of the lake and now he’s quarted in my room? I swear, like a venereal disease he haunts me.

Valdo drags a hand down his face. Scruff is growing on his chin. He needs a shave, and eyedrops. He looks like death. ”I was so sure you’d died. Jesus.” He looks at Will with detached interest and does an half-assed flop with his hand. ” Is he..?”

”He’s breathing,” I say, toning down my volume. I so did not sign up for this little chat. My brain is still processing the monster problem. ”Where are we?”

The room is strange. It doesn’t belong to the cabin. Under different circumstances I would’ve been in awe over the craftsmanship of the furniture, the old-timey, asmr-looking fireplace opposite the sturdy bed, all the details flirting with a time before electricity was invented. I would like to putter around in slippers and a luxurious robe in here. There’s a beautiful desk beneath the window, and a pair of gloves hanging off the desk chair. I recognize those gloves, easily, thanks to the blood stains and the teeth marks. The hairs on my arms stand on alert, an electrical current of urgency rushing through me at the thought of Geralt covered in bites. How long have I slept?

”Where are you going?” Valdo sits on the bed, his weight trapping my legs under the blanket. His hand rests on my knee, like it’s 2005 and I’m slipping out of his bed at 1 AM to walk across the hallway to my dorm room (Man, college really was as unrewarding as the Tall child claims).

I brace myself for another uncomfortable pull and push. ”I have to check on Ge— Aiden.” I cross my fingers. Aiden should be in Intensive care in a hospital miles from here.

Valdo regards me with pity. He gives my knee a squeeze. ”Aiden’s dead.”

”No—” I begin, pretty sure he doesn’t have a scintilla of evidence to support that claim, but I’m cut short by Valdo cupping my chin and lean in to inspect the cuts on my face.

”How do you feel? Is your head clear?”

I nod, taking my head back. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

I convince my body that it’s soup and start to slide in Will’s direction, with the full intent of climbing over his body rather than waste another minute debating with Valdo. (When you’re more creeped out by your ex than Imhotep guest-starring in your bed, it’s time to leave.)

Valdo grabs my arm. ”The door is locked from the outside, you idiot. Don’t you think I have checked?”

Great. Just great. I can’t believe Geralt didn’t stash us in different rooms. I’m filing a complaint at the front desk. ”Uh huh, I believe you. Just let me check for myself.”

”Listen. Listen, Julek! We need to be on the same page here. We won’t make it out of here alive otherwise. Do you get that?”

_Julek._ It’s like we are back at school, and we’re forced to do a project together, Valdo guilt-tripping me and getting under my skin by calling me _Julek_ or _buttercup,_ nicknames he overheard my dad call me. It’s ’my place or your place’ and ’why can’t you hang out with me on Saturday, do you got a date?’ All over. It’s a time-loop. I’m in a time-loop in purgatory. Stuck in a room with Valdo for all eternity because I was too lazy to stand up for myself.

”What do you mean?” I sit up against the headboard, pulling my leg free of the blanket. Jumping frog-position is considerably better, I’ll admit. Until Valdo reveals what he’s been hiding in his other hand. The back of my head hits the headboard out of sheer reflex when he places the sleek, black pistol on the covers.

”Found a stash in here,” Valdo gestures to a broken trash bag near the wardrobe. There’s dark clothes strewn on the floor. ”Police issued gun. A uniform. And this:” he tosses an ID badge into my lap.

With unsteady fingers I open it. Stare at the photo of the button-nosed young woman. ”It belongs to an agent Renfri Nivellen. DEA.”

Valdo nods sagely, although his tense posture betrays what he actually feels. The stress he’s under. “She must have investigated them and caught them red handed trafficking drugs. The body was brought here so they could dump her where no one’s sought to look. It’s evil. It’s fucking diabolical what they are getting away with.”

“Uh. What?” The woman could be anyone, she’s probably a girlfriend. Tagging along for a holiday, but arriving late? It could happen. Although I’m not prepared for the twist of Geralt having a girlfriend after all our flirting. Falling for an unavailable man. Why, oh why, do these things keep happening to me? When can I catch a break?!

”These people, these _fucking_ _lowlives_ ,” Valdo says, voice tight, ”poisoned us with their drugs. I don’t know, must have spiked our water last night. I hallucinated—” his breath hitches, ”I thought I saw you die. I, I don’t—I saw aliens land in the lake, all kinds of crazy shit. These bastards, they won’t let us walk. They will kill us—”

”Woah, Valdo, you’re freaking me out,” I try to quell the racing paranoia in the room. It’s never good when the paranoia emanates from the guy with the gun. ”Calm down. No one’s hurting anyone here. Geralt’s not what you think. He’s good! If you talked to him I’m sure he—”

Valdo groans, like he can’t listen to another word, and press the pistol to my forehead to underscore this sentiment. I flinch as I think I hear the safety click off. ”You think you’re in love with him, of course you do. You’ve always been so fucking naive. It’s textbook Stockholm syndrome, Jaskier. He’s manipulating you and you eat it all up like you're _grateful_.” He sounds utterly disgusted by what he perceives is my less than dignified personality traits.

”Oh. Oh, that’s rich,” I say, wishing I could put a lot more punch behind my protest—like a physical punch. I vibrate with the sheer strain of holding myself still. Valdo Marx will eat his words. When there’s not a loaded weapon pressed to my head.

Valdo sneers. ”They will dump our bodies in the woods. Don’t be so fucking naive, Jaskier. This is what drug cartels do!”

“Okay! Okay.” So many conspiracy theories to address, so little time. I raise my hands. “I hear you.”

”Okay.” Valdo sniffles and moves closer. Rests his wrist on my neck and puts his face close to mine. It’s not advisable to move when there’s a gun an inch from your right ear, and the hot breath of a madman on your left. ”I thought you were dead,” he repeats quietly, and nuzzles my earlobe. His tongue comes out to lick it—this is officially 1000% worse than the kikimore antenna.

”Mm-hm,” I say, pressing my mouth together in order to stifle the gag reflex. ”We should do this again. Like, some other time?”

Valdo leans back with a sigh, gestures with the pistol at Will. ”You have to help him get up.”

”What? He’s unconscious,” I protest. I know I can deal with Valdo but Will shouldn’t be forced to partake. I throw my hands up when the pistol sways back at me. ”Okay, okay! Solid plan you’ve got. I better get to it then.”

Valdo paces the room, as if preparing for the final showdown. I think he’s about to shoot the lock like he’s in a cop show.

Will is conveniently pliant as I wrap his arms around my neck. Being in a coma would do that to you. ”We’ll faceplant on the floor if you don’t pitch in,” I say, matter-of-fact even though I’m boiling on the inside. ”You better take his other arm.” _And then I’ll fucking rip your head off, you piece of shit._

Valdo shifts foot back and forth. He’s got that staring, megalomaniac look he has when he’s mid-speech about some perceived injustice or another. ”Carry him,” he orders. And as an afterthought: ”We’ll dump him if we have to.”

God, Will is fucking heavy. I groan and huff as I support most of his weight with his arm slung over my shoulder. ”What’s the plan, Joffrey?”

Valdo, with a smugness pulling at the corner of his mouth like he’s so, so proud over his deceit presses the handle down on the door. ”We’ll sneak out and get to the truck. I saw them leave the keys in the ignition.”

I sigh at my own gullibility. To think it took me _years_ to see through Valdo’s bullshit, and I still hadn’t succeeded. ”You’re unfuckingbelievable.”


	12. Revenge of the Raspberry

The bedroom door opens to a corridor. Empty. Quiet, except for my huffs and noises I let out to alert the residents of the house. I try to stall our progress by having Will walk at a snail’s pace. Valdo abruptly stops mid-track, staring at the nightmarish vision at the end of the corridor.

Geralt stomps up the stairs with intent, fitting the bill of a mass murderer. He’s wearing a butcher’s apron, from being interrupted in the curating of the warg insides. Each organ contributes to an array of ingredients in the potions Witcher’s use for extra juice. Nothing goes to waste, and by the scowl on his face I’m sure he’ll find some use for Valdo’s organs as well. In fact, I hope there’s a special jar with _Valdo’s stones_ written on it.

”Geralt.” My lungs deflates like a balloon from holding my breath for ten consequtive minutes. Every muscle in my body relaxes before I’ve even registered Valdo’s defeated ’shit’. I think Geralt knows, judging by his surprised/pleased look. “How’s your morning going?” I add, despite the urgent need to flip several tables and then light them on fire. “My morning sure has been wonderful!”

Geralt swishes the carving knife to the sharpening stone he obviously brought with him for intimidating purposes, evading the need for verbal communication. I’d say it’s a success. The repetitive _swish swish slice slice_ does an excellent job draining the bravado from Valdo’s composure.

”Jaskier,” Geralt says with a glint of teeth, and my insides liquefy some more at that barely restrained anger. His stern _very disappointed_ glower attaches to Valdo like a predator picking out a prey, but it’s still me he addresses. “What do you want me to do with him?”

What do I want? I hold back an hysterical laugh. “Geralt. Honestly, I don’t know.” I don’t know why he’s handing the decision over to me when I obviously can’t do a thing to change the situation. He looks at me like he’s prepared to wait forever. I can’t. “The gun is distracting.” 

Geralt grunts and shrugs a shoulder in a silent _you aren’t wrong._

Mummy Will is looking between us like we’re equally fucking crazy and deserve each other. 

”Valdo, you’re being a distraction. Put the gun on the floor and go back to your room before I nail you to the wall with this knife.” Geralt lets the light reflect on the blade, a preview of what’s to come if Valdo doesn’t comply this instant.

There’s a whine to my right and a frantic shuffle with Will becoming mostly my responsibility. Abruptly, Valdo pushes the pistol into my mid-section. I fumble with the weapon, which wants to be in my possession even less than I want to possess it. It slips from my hands and hit my foot in petty retaliation.

I hiss in pain. ”Fff..., ahhh, that will bruise. That will definitely bruise.”

Geralt is on Valdo in an instant, grabbing him by the neck and escorting him back to, not the room we came from but the bedroom that was assigned to him earlier (I suspect it’s Lambert’s). This time, the lock serves its purpose.

The house is on a higher altitude than I was expecting when I was carted here in the dead of the night. The view over the Morhen mountain range and the lake are simply stunning; it’s a literal breath of fresh air. Lambert and Eskel are eating breakfast around a large oak table on the terrace and preparing for another long day of cleaning up the messes left by the tourists.

Geralt looks both more gaunt and younger with the blood cleaned off (still some blood behind his ears), like he would much rather soak in a warm bath than wash himself off in the kitchen sink. I stifle the urge to act on the sudden swell of gratitude and affection in my chest. Would be mighty stupid to thank him for the assistance by wrapping my arms and legs around him in a not so platonic koala hug, wouldn’t it? Hilarious.

“Geralt, are you— Blistering bullocks, where did you come from?!“

Apparently I’m more shook up than I realized. I almost suffer a heart attack when the very same little demon child I played soup cans with in the Last Chance gas station appears from under the table. She raises her tiny hands out for me, apple-green eyes blinking innocently asking to be picked up. The words _Not today, Satan!_ Might have passed my lips.

Geralt scoops the child up without breaking stride, like _the bend and scoop_ is the most natural motion in his repertoire. He gives me The withering look of Offended Parents Everywhere and sits down at the far end of the table with the child huddled protectively in his arms. What, because I said a bad word? Or two? His daughter started it. Who’s to say she hasn’t bad-influenced me?

My face is numb and my tongue feels like it’s been stung, because that was a perfectly executed _an authentic dad move_. This recent development affects me far worse than the sight of a Witcher covered in warg blood, far worse than being up close and personal with a kikimore. May I remind you that I was 26 going on 16 with plans on staying a bachelor until my late forties—committed relationships with _dads_ where not on the sched. _I’m already half-up on a hill. I should run for it._

Geralt blows raspberries against Ciri’s belly to her utter, squealing delight, and fondly murmurs something in her ear when he thinks I don’t notice (instructions for the ‘stay low, stay quiet’ game, which I didn’t know at the time). He looks smug and he’s _stalling,_ he’s stalling an adult conversation by focusing his attentions on his daughter. For shame, I say! _For shame._

Eskel pulls out a chair, grunts invitingly in fluent Witcher-ish which I don’t speak, and resumes solving his Sunday crossword.

I glance back at Geralt and the kid. The family connection seems obvious now. I firmly decide not to ask whether _the_ _significant_ _other_ is still around to save myself from further embarrassment (mum says I’m putting my foot in my mouth more often in my 20s than when I was 2).

I sit and reach for a yogurt cup in order to feel better about things, even though it’s marketed for children. Another quick glance rewards me with an equally covert, approving nod from the three-year-old, now perched on her dad’s arm with a grip on his ear.

“Oh, thank god.” Famished, I dig in with the help of a teaspoon.

“Ciri told me you like pancakes.”Lambert pushes a plate in front of me with savoury-smelling food. He wears a shit-eating grin for some reason, and Geralt frowns.

“She picked these for you, wanted you to know,” Eskel puts a whisky tumbler with (drooping) wildflowers in front of my plate. He raises his large palm for the kid to high-five.

I nod my sincerest respects to her. “Thank you, sweetheart. That’s very thoughtful of you.”

Ciri smiles shyly and curls her hand in her father’s hair, adhering to the rules of the game (by having her uncles speak in her stead).

Geralt holds her up, feet dangling so that they are at eye-level with each other. It’s quite a sight. ”What did you do, my daughter?” He asks gruffly, and the child hiccup-giggles. ” _Did you think you could trick me?”_

I would’ve cowered in the corner, but not this young lady. She nods vigorously with her mouth tightly sealed shut, but giggles louder at her father’s exaggerated gasp of betrayal.

Geralt sighs dramatically, but his eyes are shining brighter than the sun with pride: his witchling hasn’t uttered a word. ”Alright. You win this time ma weddin, but we need to talk about your methods. Those recruits of yours are unreliable at _best_.”

“At best!” Ciri thrills, happy as a lark.

“Hey!” Lambert objects.

Geralt brings her in for a revenge raspberry, then carefully lets her spring free to return to her Important lego project under the table.

I might be covering up a smile and Geralt might be covering up a blush when he hears my snort. I can’t wait to tell my friends back at the cabin. I mean, these men are ruled by a three-year-old and they’re clearly no threat. Not to people who aren’t a threat to them, at least.

Lambert glances between me and his suddenly quiet brother with his eyes making a side-quest skywards. He leans forward and decides to ruin the mood. ”Do you want to see Aiden?”

I trail after Lambert down the garden path with a sinking heart. They must have buried Aiden at the edge of the property. A mound of fresh soil marks the spot under a couple of fruit-bearing trees. It’s beautiful enough, but not enough. Aiden had such a long life ahead of him; such a long line of strangers to piss off, before he dies prematurely of lung cancer and/or high blood pressure. Instead he dies a vacation-related death at 25 (actually, that kinda makes sense).

Oh, crap. I sniffle and then I decide fuck it and start to cry in earnest, snot and tears spraying. It feels good to let go, but it makes Lambert stare at me wide-eyed like I’ve just told him I fucked his mother on her deathbed.

“Was it something I said?”

“N-no, no.” I shake my head. Ah. Pew. I can’t breathe, the snot is clogging my nose. “It’s not fair, ‘s all. He was such a sweetheart.”

Lambert guides me with an unrelenting hand until I have an unblocked view over the freshly dug grave. ”See? He has to lay there a couple of hours to recharge. Like those batteries.” Lambert’s voice is low and respectful, like he doesn’t want to disturb a sleeping patient. ”He’s pulling elemental energy from the earth.”

Plants are sprouting from the dirt around Aiden’s body. Sprouting around his ears. There’s buds—flower buds. Like that macabre scene from Hannibal but instead of mushrooms growing on a corpse there’s a forest nursery cushioning an unconscious chain smoker like all sins are forgiven and returned to the earth. Aiden’s dark curls are plastered to his forehead like he’s burning up from a fever. I stare at his bandaged mid-section, imagining the insectoid arm punching straight through.

He’s not dead, is the thing. He’s very much not dead. _What the actual fuck._

”What the actual fuck??” I feel like I might punch Lambert in the face. ”How?” I flail my arms in exasperation. Lambert barely reacts when I jazz-hand half an inch from his nose. ”How can you stand there and pretend this doesn’t rise fundamental questions pertaining to the dichotomy of life and death?”  
I’m unreasonably offended for all philosophers out there, past and present. I’m Chidi levels of offended.

Meanwhile Lambert has seen so many deaths, lost so many loved ones, the distinction loses its meaning. He doesn’t care; ran out of fucks to give a long time ago. Shut up.

”I think he channeled elemental magic to create fire,” he says, although he sounds like he’s not 100% sure. ”That’s not just a neat trick these days, considering the fact that these woods are drained. I figured…”

He looks down at Aiden and tries to cover his nerves with a shrug. ”Option B, I’ll set Sleeping beauty on fire.”

”Uh huh.” I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe I ought to sit down. “Be sure to give him a smoke first. He loves those.”

I kneel in the grass, because I’ve heard it helps when shit keep ramming into you like an eighteen-wheeler on a highway, and bury my head between my knees. Then I think better of it and curl up in a fetus position, hugging my knees to my chest. Ah. This is better. The grass is soft and comforting. I ought to stay down here until Aiden wakes up and/or when the hallucinogenic drugs leave my system. “Do you got a second grave? Perhaps adjacent?”

Lambert holds two fingers to Aiden’s wrist for a moment, then he decides to change the gauze around Aiden’s palms. They’re still damaged, but already pink and healing. I sit up, watching the nimble administrations. ”Do you know, um, why he can do that stuff? Throw fire balls with his hands?”

”He never mentioned it to you?” Lambert doesn’t sound particularly interested. Which means the opposite, I’ve learned.

“No.” I shake my head. Aiden is Yennefer’s friend, not mine. Does Yennefer know? Oh god have mercy does she know?! I whimper and resume my fetal position in the grass. A shadow is cast over my face, presumably alerted by my ruckus. Geralt is standing there, towering with an inquisitive furrow. ”Don’t judge,” I warn from the ground.

Geralt holds out a hand for me to take, and what a hand. Looks strong and capable. There’s a lot of corded muscles going all the way up to his shoulder, wouldn’t you know it. There’s three or more muscles there that keeps his arm attached to his shoulder and I want to say trapeze..? They’re not visible on my arm even though I can’t be that worse off, can I? He’s just very lean. I’m just healthy. “I want to lay down for a while.”

Geralt hesitates, then nods slowly and to my surprise he sits down, legs folded like a wise zen master. He regards Aiden’s face intently. “Some people don’t know their own strength.”

Magic is a hard find these days. Mages are no more powerful than a magician on the Las Vegas strip and the Witchers haven’t cast a decent Sign in 50 years. Odd incidents here and there makes Geralt suspect that the resources of elemental energy are merely changing, not dissolving. Going where it needs to be. The spheres are moving at a snail’s pace and natural sources of magic seem to reappear at random across the earth, like poking holes in a map while blindfolded.

People either siphon their magic from these sources, like Triss Merigold, or in rare cases they are these sources (like someone we know, who is currently seeking out Aiden through the root system of the forest and bringing him back to life).

What would be insanely valuable is finding an asset in a third category: with the knack of not only _locating_ those sources, but attract them. Pull them from the dead earth where there are no detectable elemental energies like finding water in the desert. The Witchers could use someone like that. A desert walker.

Whether Aiden is one of those becomes pretty clear when he awakes with a start. For a short moment his irises are silver, glinting brighter than a polished silver blade reflecting the sunlight. 

Lambert pretends he’s not choking on air—he’s never seen anyone recovering from this sort of procedure. He reaches down a helping hand. “Welcome back, sprout.”

Sprout-Aiden is in a frail state, which in my book means that he’s in need of tea and a nutritious meal, and 500 mg of rutin and vitamin C, according to my grandma. Geralt needs to improvise his interrogation tactics because I’m sitting there in the kitchen spoon-feeding Aiden soup, and Ciri keeps handing Aiden pieces of lego with a straight face claiming they are fishsticks.

“Open wide, or I’ll rub you all over with cabbage, you cabbage baby,” I threaten as I attack Aiden’s teeth with the spoon, and Ciri giggles and clings to my leg. I got to say, I’m doing a splendid job cleaning up my language.

We’re having a grand time. Everyone except the Witchers, who look too bearish and dirty for their own kitchen.

“Who told you to go to Morhen?” Geralt keeps glaring between Aiden and his eight apples tall daughter and the puffy red bags under my eyes. Yes, Geralt, I’ve cried for the second time in what, 8 hours? I’m not an enemy of my own emotional register, you know, I’m an artist! 

“None of your business,” Aiden rasps, true to form. His gaze is all over the place and he’s trembling from what I assume is nicotine withdrawal. He gingerly puts a piece of lego between his lips and puffs. There’s smoke coming out of the lego piece smelling of burning plastic. Ciri is quietly flabbergasted by this development.

“What does it matter who told him?” I confiscate the lego (ew) and wave dismissively. I’m not stupid. Aiden’s warning glances and unsubtle kicks to my chins tell me he’s leaving Yennefer out of the conversation for a reason. Yennefer knows shit and I don’t want to know how—I need a drink first. I need the whole fucking winery. There should be a wine cellar somewhere in the house and I’m determined to find it. “Leave him be.”

Geralt swallows—he’s feeling under the weather at the moment, nauseous from the potions he marathon chugged last night. He’s still digesting the warg heart that’s supposed to revitalize him quicker, but it seems to do the opposite. Odd, because Lambert and Eskel seem unaffected so far.

“It matters,” he says through a sudden stab of pain in his stomach, “Because someone tricked you to come here. That someone neglected to tell you what kind of place Morhen is and put you in the middle of a veritable shitstorm.”

“ _You_ never said a thing,” I point out, ”and I’ve quite had enough of people lying to my face.”

Geralt looks at me with a hurt, innocent, completely fake expression of _who, me? What did I do??_ I guess he is the closest one for me to shout at.

”Yes, you. You’ve set a world record in lying by omission by now.” Anger coils in my stomach out of nowhere, years of feeling like I’ve been pushed around, years of believing that I wouldn’t make it on my own. ”You’d rather shoot my ass full of sedatives, you’ve tackled me to the ground, you rather put me in a room with the _last_ person I trust than talk to me like a normal person. You could stand to be nicer, you know!”

I put the bowl inside the spacious basin and run the tap on full pressure. I’m shaking terribly, but man it feels good to let my frustration out. Not good as I’m feeling better, exactly, but I feel raw like… raw. Like this soup spoon I’m furiously scrubbing has scooped out all my sanity and my brain no longer has a comfort blanket to protect it against the onslaught of reality-altering facts. Valdo nearly blowing my brains out right after I started to think of myself as a free man didn’t even make it to the Top Five on the laundry list I will have to show my future therapist. (“What Jaskier did on his summer vacation, page one…”)

“I suppose,” Geralt remarks dryly, “but then you’d be dead.”

”No! No, I wouldn’t!” I twirl and point at him with the spoon, soap lather splashing. ”I would’ve had a decent chance if you had just told me what was going on from the start! And who’s the cop, your girlfriend?”

 _Oh shit._ It’s like a line taken from a tv-show. It’s rock bottom. I have arrived. I’m the lead speaker in the Jealous spouses convention, from 0 to 100, just like that, and I don’t even have a spouse. The last thing I need is a spouse.

I collapse on a chair, hands and spoon buried in my hair, grasping for something to save face. Humor works. ”Fuck, I wish I never came here. All I wanted was to lie on a beach and eat hot dogs and look at magazines. Not to be the Final girl in my own horror movie. I’m not even— not to be brash but I’m as far from a virgin as I can possibly be. The math simply doesn’t add up.”

The Witchers share an awkward look with each other. I don’t think they know how to handle a civilian breakdown quite like mine. They usually don’t get this far in the reveal process, and the victims don’t usually show more distress over their relationship status than over the actual maiming and killing.

”Thuck,” Ciri lisps in sympathy, and pats my knee like her age allows her to see straight through my bullshit. She’s the only one who understands, bless her.

“Language, poppet,” Eskel sighs. The adults are useless, but Ciri usually takes his advice under consideration. He picks her up under his arm, carrying her like she’s a limp bag of tater tots. “Let’s go work on uncle Eskel’s truck.” She makes indiscernible noises and doesn’t seem to mind this new mission at all.

Geralt looks at my slumping shoulders. He wants to apologize, he would like to offer comfort, but his own pain hasn’t receded. He suspected some kind of poisonous reaction to the questionable ingredients put in there by Olgierd von Everec, but not at this magnitude. He’s currently not in the best cognitive condition to diagnose himself or inform his brothers. Instead he lets himself out of the kitchen by the backdoor in hunt for some fresh air. Ruling logic: An immortal man can’t die of poisoning, thus it’s best to simply walk it off (idiot!) and not let his kid see him in this state.

He’s leaning against the bannister on the terrace when I approach. The pinpricks from Beann’shie’s teeth itch and burn on his throat. He tugs at the hem of his sweater, feeling like he’s suffocating. “I told you to leave,” he mumbles, recalling the first day. He knows he could’ve made us leave, had he put a real effort in it. Instead he let himself get side-tracked by ye ole’ Cock of Hip.

“ _Pff_. I thought you were threatening me,” I lie. I lean my hand on the bannister, wishing he’d look at me.

“I told you I wasn’t.” He grimaces at another internal stab. “I should have.”

That hurts. “Yeah, well, you should tell your face that.” There’s the sarcasm again. Why are we behaving like children? I glance over, noticing his posture. The man looks like he’s in urgent need of an appendix removal. “I mean, you glower. You must suffer so many headaches.”

“Only when you’re around,” Geralt retorts with a pained gasp, pressing a hand to his side.

He’s clearly in pain. “Geralt, what’s wrong? Are you sick?”

“I’m fine,” he lies, and then he sags like a Victorian damsel in distress.

I throw my shoulder under his arm and go down on my knees, supporting his weight. Thankfully the huge glass wall allows us to be seen from the inside. Lambert strides out with a pitcher of lemonade, which he unceremoniously throws over his brother’s face as well as mine. ”Hey, snap out of it! I’ve got shit to do and a human turnip to butter up.” I suspect he’s talking about recruiting Aiden.

Geralt spits and blinks at me through wet lashes. His tongue dashes out to taste his lips. “Apple juice,” he deduces with a faint smile.

I brush a stray water droplet from Geralt’s eyebrow. “You keep falling on your knees for me,” I gently note, while Lambert stomps off muttering about stubborn brothers and how he can never rest, monologuing to someone he calls ‘Landford’ (Landford Younger, that’s his American sweetheart of the Wild West) that this is ‘Exactly like the time he fell off the train and into that ravine).

Geralt’s hand still rests heavily on my shoulder, and my gaze still rests heavily on his lips. ”Should I read into the subtext,” I ask quietly, “or is this just a professional hazard?”

Am I just a tourist? Is he just the slob who works all the time and doesn’t need anyone else’s company besides his kid? If that’s all there is… seems like a lot of blood and screaming for such a vanilla end.

Geralt’s hand gives my shoulder a light squeeze, like he’s checking that I’m real. “I’m sorry I tackled you. I haven’t been around people much, lately, forgot how to act... especially around you. I’m sorry I pushed you, before...”

I open my mouth to ask him what he’s referring to when I know precisely what he’s referring to and that’s when the next disaster hits.

I swear I could not make this shit up.

The ground underneath the terrace suddenly rattles like the start of an earthquake. The mountain gorge beneath releases a groan, and Geralt grapples my arms when I try to stand and nearly topple over. The glass panes in the terrace doors shatter in their frames, sending broken shards everywhere. Instinctively I push Geralt’s head into my stomach and hold on to his back, bodily protecting him from the glass rain.

When it’s over Geralt stares at me in awe, like he can’t believe I just did that. I can barely believe my own actions myself. ”Are you hurt?” He gently removes the glass fragments from my hair.

It feels… nice. It’s unexpectedly nice and tender, and I might want him to stay close to me like this for longer, his hands mapping me and his face so open and honest. His body-heat seeps into my skin, and I realize I’ve still got my hands white-knuckling his shirt wherever I find fabric. I release the embrace and lean back. “What was that?”

We turn to look out over the Kaer Morhen valley, where a flock of birds rises to the sky. There’s a sweet smell drifting with the breeze that doesn’t seem to belong to this plane, and a faint aura rising in the sky that has nothing to do with neither weather phenomena nor geophysics. _Lilac and gooseberries._

It’s coming from the cabin.

*

Yennefer has a dejavu of carving these inscriptions herself with the old woman Iris von Everec looming over her. She’s haunted by a seven-year-old’s visceral memory of grief and terror, and then—nothing. Her life re-started from a blank slate once her inherent Chaos was trapped in the vessel. How could she have forgotten? Her life didn’t begin on the streets of Aedirn, but _here_. In this cabin.

The Chaos must be _huge._ The bowels of the cabin are saturated in the byproducts she left behind the last time, every spot of black rot growing, oscillating and morphing to larger shadows. An earthquake rattles the cabin every time she chants. Cracks appear in the wood beams over her head, and she clearly should’ve thought this through. The cabin won’t stand the pressure, but maybe the destruction has to happen in order to release the chaos sealed under its foundation. Like pulling the cork out of a bottle of champagne.

“Run outside,” she urges, swatting Fringilla’s hand when her friend attempts to pull her up.

“To where?” Fringilla sounds desperate. “Vilgefortz and Valdo have the car keys!”

The plan is going to shit and her friends will die because of it. She screwed up, she knows. Now she’ll have to stay here and try with her bare hands to contain the Chaos percolating like burning lava. Yes, that will work. Fuck.

Essi holds on to the doorframe. “Yennefer, come on! We’re getting out of here right now!”

But if she leaves they are all lost. Yennefer puts her hand to cover the ashen imprint of her own kid-sized palm and grits her teeth as it burns through her skin. It’s resisting her like a child throwing a tantrum.

“Calm down… calm down...hush, now.” The stench of her own flesh mingles with the other scents in the air ( _lilac, gooseberries_ ). There’s no more advice she can follow. The old crook has abandoned her. Shouldn’t she be her to assist her, like last time? Yennefer rams her closed fist down in fury. “Calm the fuck down!”

There’s a ceasing of movement and sound so abrupt she doesn’t notice until she can hear her own wheezing breaths. She’s alone in the cabin now. Outside there’s an eerie silence that has the hairs standing up on her neck.

She rises on unsteady feet and walks out on the porch.

Her friends stand huddled together, using the Miata as a shield between them and a lone, cloaked figure standing amongst the trees.

“You requested my assistance?”

The figure is dressed in a threadbare, victorian dress with a high neck. Taller than a normal person, but the height is exaggerated by the cloak—no, veil. The irregular points under the veil remind her of the ends of an antler. Yennefer blinks and when she opens her eyes, the creature is standing on the porch.

The crone, because Iris von Everec is no longer recognizable in flesh or spirit, removes the veil revealing the crown of relict bones around her skull. Her skull, which stands out under the thin, rotten skin. She gazes at Yennefer with eyes that are identical to the old decrepit lady in the back office of Last Chance. 

“Mrs. von Everec?” She hesitates.

“Useless child.” The crone spits. “Step aside.”

The crone taps Yennefer’s leg with the cane. When she enters the lintel above the door vibrates and the earthquake picks up once more.

Yennefer follows. She feels somewhat responsible for the apparent mess she’s made and for the senior citizen she’s come to know these past few months. “We shouldn’t be in here. The roof will collapse.”

”What do we have here?” The crone inspects the items collected from the cabin, then moves on to the lute resting defenseless in the center of the floor. Under the strings are the photograph of the Wolszczaks, the couple believed to be her parents, and a polaroid of Yennefer and I sitting in the Pankratz living room, last Christmas eve. I’m flashing a toothy grin, dressed up in my favorite kashmir fudge brown sweater (bought by her as a Christmas present, tag still attached). Yennefer looks sloshed with her hair in a loose bun and a coffee mug raised in a toast—she’s smiling loopsily, that’s one of her rarest smiles, and there’s a Santa hat askew on her head. Two friends just goofing on the sofa, toasting with my parents and sisters and cousins and it’s _valuable_. To mrs. Von Everec it’s _potent_. The antithesis of grief and that’s what is needed to twist the lid and reverse the spell.

“My strongest bond,” Yennefer admits, unease prickling her neck when she catches the hungry look in the crone’s eyes; the contempt in her leer. She’s been so naive, following the old woman’s advice like a stringed puppet.

”A potent sacrifice. These, on the other hand...”Scattered around are the lute are the gloves Yennefer gave Vilgefortz on his birthday, Fringilla’s cherished violin, a lock of Aiden’s hair sitting on top of a used and slightly singed t-shirt.

“What are these supposed to be?” The crone pokes the end of her cane at the belongings collected from Essi, Ellen and Valdo, Jaskier’s friends from college. Yennefer quickly ran out of significant bonds, okay?

“I’m not a people person,” she shrugs, pretending that it’s not a big deal. ”It doesn’t matter. Do you hear me? I’m not going through with this. I’m not doing the ritual. The last time I did—”

She jerks in repulsion when the crone strides up, grabs her chin and yanks her close. Sharp nails leave stinging scratches on her cheeks.

“I gave you twenty years to recover, you ungrateful runt,” mrs. Von Everec wheezes. She taps her cane against the floor. _Tap, tap_. ”Everything you have been searching for is here! I told you what was necessary. I urge you to not skim on your offerings or the Chaos will consume you.”

It _will_ consume her. The cold foreboding of loss passes through her. Seven years of her life, gone. Is it worth the risk, to start afresh? It’s twenty years of her life, her _identity,_ her friends—and apparently she’s still not strong enough? Who knows who she’ll be tomorrow. A shell.

It’s too much to take in. The crone presses her down on her hands and knees. ”Read,” the crone moves her by an agonizing grip on her neck closer to the inscriptions. ”Read or I’ll bring you the bodies of the young women I saw hiding out there.”

Yennefer twists in the vise-hard grip, and kicks her heel out to connect with the crone’s shin. The old withering bones should’ve been brittle, but they’re superglued by stolen magic from the forest. She manage to grab the cane and with a relentless shove she crushes what’s left of the hag’s rotten nose. The crone wails and Yennefer bolts toward the door. She doesn’t make it more than a few steps before the crone’s Sign sends her across the living room, crashing into the wall.

A mounted skull of a relict falls down inches from her thigh and pierces the floor with it’s long canines. She folds her hand around the largest tooth and yanks it loose.

“Thanks, Cujo.” It’s decent as far as a shiv goes. She makes a _come here_ -sign with two of her fingers (she knows martial arts and isn’t afraid to use it). “Come on, grandma! Show me what you’ve got.”

The cane is back in the crone’s hand. With a demonic cackle she drives it straight through the lute and through the crack in the floor. The instrument disintegrates in an explosion of splinters, and light starts to spread from the crater underneath.

With an enraged battle cry, Yennefer charges.


	13. Splitsies on the gas money

Geralt maneuvers Roach down the mountain. Lambert and Aiden share the backseat of the Jeep, Roach’s roof box contains their combined weapon stock and me? I brace myself on the dashboard during the steep declines. My face is harried with worry over what kind of fresh fuckery is waiting for us. Geralt doesn’t need to tell me that he hasn’t seen a burst of earth elemental energy on this scale since long before the invention of seismographs. Since the age of mages, in fact.

He’s been alive long enough to know when something sorcery-y is going down. Geralt, assuming pissed-off Witcher mien, connects with Lambert in the rearview mirror. “Any left of our rations from Triss?”

Lambert pulls forth a small flask from his chest pocket. It’s an antique originally for the purpose of carrying whisky, an anniversary gift from Landford, who tragically died by unanimous vote in the gallows in 1889. Lambert never takes a step without it. “A few millimeters left, and that’s the case with all of them. In other words,” his voice lowers, “we’re fucked.”

Geralt recalculates. Lambert single-handedly bagged the shoal of drowners last night. He pulled an all-night shift working on the remedy for Aiden, so naturally the last drops go to Lambert. Granted that Geralt subdued the warg pack on loosy potion that attacked him from the inside, but the warg heart knitted his organs together again and he feels fine now.

“You look like shit,” Geralt barks at his brother less than diplomatically. “You drink it!”

“What? So I’m not out of breath when I watch you die?” Lambert accuses. “You need this far more than me, old man. I’m running out of ideas to save your dumb ass.”

Geralt scoffs incredulously, “Old? I’m four years older than you.”

“Which doesn’t earn you authority over me.”

This sounds like a typical sibling argument with the potential to go on forever. It probably has.

I peer over my shoulder, searching the backseat for other hidden treasures. “I could use a drink, actually. You’ve got any of the good stuff back there?”

“I could use one too,” Aiden grumbles around an unlit cigarette. He’s trying and failing to switch on the lighter which doesn’t sit well with the fresh thin skin on his fingers.

Lambert stares at him speechless for a moment before he yanks both the cigarette and lighter from Aiden’s damaged hands. He calmly puts the cigarette between his own lips as he lights up. Aiden’s lips separate more out of shock than out of accomodation when the cigarette is pushed back in place. 

“I can show you how to dispel it without that shit.”

Aiden inhales sharply and his brown irises flashes with an agitated streak of silver for other reasons than the nicotine hit I bet. Lambert presses his hand to the other man’s chest beneath his collarbone. “It’s like a heartbeat. Feel it? You can control it with practice.”

The cigarette has one nano-second left alive before it’s burned to a tiny crisp. Aiden coughs and curls towards the window. ”No, thanks.” He fumbles in his efforts to light another.

We reach the dirt road leading us in the direction of the cabin. My surreptitious glances burn a hole in the side of Geralt’s face, wearing down his resistance. “What?”

“Let me inside your head,” I urge. “You’ve got some serious thinking face going on and I need a distraction, or I’ll start to imagine all the horrid things that might have happened to my best friend.”

Geralt knows who out of my friend group I am talking about.

“I was thinking about the first time I saw you at Last Chance,” he admits, eyes strained on the road.

“Oh? Good times, good times.” I touch my throat, embarrassed to feel the ghost touch of chest pressed against chest and the confusingly arousing taste of chips in my mouth. Onion. “Although their range of chips needs improvement. I’ll make sure to leave something in the suggestion box next time I’m over. Would that be rude? I don’t think it would be rude to leave constructive feedback, if the box is there.”

“I heard Ciri playing with someone but I didn’t pick up your scent.” Geralt continues, deciding that he doesn’t know how to respond to my rambling side-note. “Thought she was playing with one of the godlings.”

“I’m going to postpone the obvious follow up questions and pretend I know what you’re talking about. Go on.”

Geralt frowns, recalling his confusion. “Your friend stepped out right in front of me and I still couldn’t read her. It was confusing, I —“

I laugh. “Ah. She tends to have that effect on people.”

Judging by the side-eye, this is the historical moment where Geralt realizes that I will go on interrupting him through most of his most important trail of thoughts. “Are you going to keep doing that?” He asks, but soft instead of admonishing.

I innocuously batter my lashes. “What do you mean?”

My grin reveals that I do know what he means. Geralt makes some combination of an exasperated sigh and a snort. He directs himself back to the audience in the back. “I think Iris put a veil on the store. My senses were blocked.”

“And you didn’t notice anything?” Lambert peeps up from prepping his revolver and does not look impressed.

An insecure glance in my direction. “I was distracted.”

Lambert clicks the magazine into position and tuts. “I bet you were.”

“I think Olgierd sold me bad potions meant to put me out of commission. I told you that he wasn’t thrilled to receive us. Not a single piece of equipment was prepared and he spoke of Triss with a venomous tongue. I should’ve—“ the humor in Geralt’s expression has been replaced by guilt. “I should’ve known.”

“That would explain why Eskel and I didn’t get sick but you literally needed the hair of the dog. You were the only one with those vials, but we all drank the warg heart ingredient. Why did he do it though?” Lambert wonders, talking over his brother’s negative self-evaluations. “You’d think the von Everecs would be more eager to please after all their neglect. Triss sent us here to help. Wait.” Lambert grimaces. He has an intermittent thorn in the side concerning the mage. You should’ve heard his speech to the happy couple on the eve of Triss and Eskel’s handfasting ceremony. ” _Fucking_ _Merigold_. She was curious, wasn’t she? She knew something was up.”

Geralt wouldn’t put it past Triss to harbor a morbid curiosity enough to send the Witchers out to find out what was being hidden from her. But she definitely couldn’t have expected the von Everecs to double-cross them to this extent. She wouldn’t have let Geralt bring Ciri otherwise. No, she’d been thoughtless but she shared that sin with Geralt. They have both been naive and let their guard down, and now they were paying for their mistake. Everyone under their protection was paying for their mistake.

“Don’t,” he mutters in response to Lambert swearing that he’ll kill Triss, doesn’t matter if they’re family now or not and she makes the best stew, “Or you have to strangle me too.”

The blast radius is close to a kilometer around the obliterated foundation of the cabin. Geralt parks on the outskirts and exits Roach with his senses strained to maximum capacity, taking into account the ashen aura in the sky obstructing the sunlight and the post-explosion state of the forest. I on the other hand stumble out of the passenger seat and fall on my knees in the charred detritus. My mouth hangs open in shock and horror. I’ve already figured out that no one can survive such an inferno.

Aiden staggers to my side, resting a feeble hand on my shoulder. I put my hand over Aiden’s and stare across the field of uprooted and broken trees.

“Where are they? Essi,” I call, “Yennefer?”

There are no heartbeats out there. Geralt and Lambert exchange a by now worn-out look between Witchers. Recovering bodies from disaster zones has been a recurrent contract since long before the invention of modern warfare. They walk parallel to each other with their longswords drawn, both deciding that this is not the ordinary catch and release of a relict and they prefer to defend themselves accordingly. Not that their swords and malfunctioning Signs will do any lasting damage to an Elemental.

“I never thought I’d say this, but I wish Triss was here,” Lambert mutters.

“Careful,” Geralt says, “I bet she heard you the first time.”

He holds up an open palm when wet gobbling noises and the crunching of bones reaches them from behind a fallen tree.

On the other side is a necrophage, slurping and feasting on the mutilated corpse of a woman. Lambert nails it with a fast series of tranquilizers without even raising the revolver from his hip.

What’s left of the woman is a flea-bitten dress, patches of grey hair and a thorn crown made of relict bones.

Lambert inspects the bones with the tip of his sword. “Do you think she deserved it?”

Geralt thinks back to the Last Chance store and how Ciri ran to him when he went to the back office to pick her up. He will never forgive himself for leaving her in the hands of Iris; will never forgive her for casting a veil preventing him from sensing the distress of his child. He ows Yennefer of Vengerberg a lifetime of gratitude for stopping the crone before he even realized something was wrong. Geralt looks back at me, trailing behind with inexpert movements, then back to the charred forest. He recalls raven-black hair fanning under a sloping sun hat, but can’t sense the young woman’s presence anywhere.

“There.” Lambert directs his attention to a burnt-out carcass of a vehicle. Behind it is a patch of grass, flattened to the ground but untouched by the fire. Four women are huddled together in the middle of the circle. They look shell-shocked and disheveled, but not hurt badly. The fourth woman is naked and stand hesitantly from her distinctively non-human crouching position.

I can’t describe how relieved I felt when I saw my friends unharmed and alive. I throw caution to the wind and run up to them in true reunion fashion.

Geralt watches stiffly as one of the girls meets me halfway and throws her arms around my neck. I pick her up and spin her around with my arms securely around her waist. Her blonde hair billows in the breeze. She’s not the raven-haired woman.

The others gather close and embrace me from all sides in a crushing but much needed group hug. Geralt shifts foot, hearing my wet laugh and wonders why I haven’t noticed that one of us is missing. It boggles him how effortlessly some people can abandon caution to give and receive comfort, believing they are safe when they’re not. He removes his jacket and offers it to Nivellen. There’s a silent question in his eyes.

Renfri, mirroring Geralt’s stance, accepts the jacket with a small, but telling headshake. He sighs and nods, feeling more disappointed than he’s felt in a long time. 

Lambert stops by the charred remains of the cabin. There’s a crater where the foundation was, a rift running deep down in the bedrock.

I dislodge from the group. “Where’s Yenna? I need me some love, and an apology. And tea.” My cheeks heat as I discover Renfri and her bare legs. “And who are you?”

”Your friend’s gone,” Renfri says with blunt directness. Just rip off the bandaid, will you.

”What do you mean, gone?”

There’s no telling where she’s gone, to ashes or elsewhere. Yennefer was most likely incinerated in the blast. She _was_ the blast. It’s… it’s kind of hard to accept.

I attract two more necrophages as I wander around calling out her name. I almost convince Geralt to let me stay overnight in the Jeep to take first watch while the others give up the search for the promise of warm beds and hot meals. Geralt says I can take first shift at the cottage and hands me crackers from the Baby Emergency kit. As the sun sets, I sullenly accept the crackers and a ride back.

_Once upon a time, twenty years ago..._

_A little girl spent her summers in the woods of Morhen. Her friends in school couldn’t know how she spent her days, her parents often repeated, because the time to reveal the existence of relicts to the world wasn’t now. In this political climate? Hell to the no._

_Also, there was science. Her dad, the biologist and university researcher, who brought two of his colleagues with him to Morhen valley, needed time to process their findings and figure out a safe way to convince the authorities that the continuing survival and protection of these creatures was necessary._

_Once the Everecs got that far in their retelling to Yennefer, they indicated that her parents' greatest adversaries were the Witchers. The Witchers were a brand of axe-wielding thugs ostracized from society, and wouldn’t hesitate to rid themselves of her if they found out that she had survived the attack._

_Witchers killed her parents was the lie served to Yennefer, and the terror of witnessing her parents and their colleagues being brought down with swords and axes awoke the dormant source of elemental magic in the seven-year-old._

_Chaos erupted._

_See, her mother was a young flaminka with an exceptional lineage, set to take over the care of the Morhen woods when Olgierd and Iris retired._

_Iris, though her power had diminished by old age, helped the child direct the chaos into a pocket in the earth, where it would be preserved until the girl was strong enough to retrieve it._

”That’s not what happened,” Geralt tells me when he tracks me down to the ruins of a lookout tower not far from the Witchers’ cottage. From there I have an uninterrupted view of the valley and the surrounding mountain range. Unfortunately it’s dark as fuck; stars appear like an all encompassing map over the known universe, but the Yenna of Vengerberg sightings are slim tonight. I feel no inclination to get down, though. I need this day—and night—to sort through my thoughts.

Geralt certainly relates to my need for alone-time, but I guess he couldn’t not check up on the crazy tourist who insists on squatting on ancient Witcher property. He scales the tower on soundless feet and sits down close to me with the understated grace of a much younger man.

The following is a testimony of this man’s excellency and moral compass: A thermos is placed on the ground within my reach. I mutter ’thanks’. He hands me a blanket without a word of recognition and then begins to reiterate his ’stern talk’ with Olgierd, in that warm, rough cadence of his that gradually warms from the inside to my fingers and toes, better than a thermos of tea ever did. I pull the offered fleece blanket over my shoulders and listen to the end of the story.

_Olgierd and Iris were druids, and they were dying of old age. They were living not so much on borrowed time as elemental magic stolen from the earth, air and water. They were shamelessly exploiting the woods, and didn’t care enough for its other inhabitants to keep up the maintenance of the borders. One evening, like ravaging ghouls, they descended on Yennefer and her mother._

_The Everecs were the terrors. They triggered the blast that obliterated the Wolszczaks and the research team and orphaned a child._

_Unfortunately for her, Iris was in over her head._

”If Iris had tried to absorb Yennefer’s magic she would’ve exploded like an old hag in the fairytales,” Geralt says with his wry humor. ’I have seen it happen once or twice. ’S not pretty.”

_Overwhelmed by the unleashed chaos, Iris had no choice but to create the vessel in the bedrock._

_The Morhen wilderness suffered. Iris probably committed her most despicable act when she discovered how useless the orphan child was in the aftermath, catatonic and suffering from amnesia. To cover up their crime they dropped her off in the state of Aedirn, hoping she would be put in the foster care system._

I slump against the cold stone. Yet the aching numbness I feel has to be nothing compared to what that child must must have felt, abandoned on the street corner of a strange city. Maybe history repeats itself, and I will find her there, wandering around like Oliver Twist, standing in line for a shelter.

”So. Do you think she’ll remember me?” I ask. ”I’ve worked so damn hard to become her friend. All those late hours at the office—wiped out with a snap of fingers. Why couldn’t she leave well enough alone?”

Geralt hesitates for a beat, a look of sympathy passing over his features. After all, I have demanded brutal honesty out of him, or I would execute my vengeance with the time-consumingly detailed plan of a supervillain (and alert the media).

”She created a powerful Quen to protect your friends. Opened a portal and removed herself from Morhen. She made a good decision. Speaks to her character.” He looks out over the charred crater of the valley, knowing Yennefer of Vengerberg has set an honorable example that he needs to adhere to. “Wasn’t an easy sacrifice to make, but she did it for your safety.”

I glance at him curiously, taken by the sincerity of his words. ”That’s quite a theory,” I say. ”Your ability to read people is a little bit disconcerting, if I have to be honest. How old are you, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?”

It’s meant as a joke because I’m terrible at these things, but Geralt looks at his hands, brow in a furrow. Judging his surface human age, I believe, and composing the lie he has to deliver.

I pour tea from the thermos and push the upturned lid into his hands. ”A question for another night,” I say, letting him off the hook.

Geralt gingerly raises the cup in a small, celebratory toast. “You’ve accepted all this remarkably well.” Yes, ma’am, I do detect the sarcasm. I don’t need to catch the playfully raised brow.

I shrug faux bashfully. “It wasn’t a great leap. I’ve always appreciated the life lessons to be learned in stories, to the extent I no longer care much for the distinction between fact and fiction. You might say I trained for this moment. Born for it in fact, if we count in both the nurture and the nature factor. My mum owns a theatre, and dad’s what you call a struggling poet but without the absinthe and the women. They always wanted me to become an actor.”

Geralt huffs into the surface of his tea.”’Splains a lot.”

“You have no idea.”

I think back on my life, wondering if I would’ve even pursued theater if my parents hadn’t seen my potential and insisted that’s where I fit in. “I wanted to sing and produce music. I’ve never felt more like myself than when it’s just me sitting with my lute or my guitar or the piano. Assuming a role on stage was easier but it wasn’t as authentic as when I play my own songs and write my own thoughts. I do love when the whole pub sings the chorus. There’s no better feeling in the world. It’s transcendent… but real too, like an embrace.” I blush, recalling my arms around his shoulders.

Geralt looks at me. I push back the urge to apologize for the word-vomit. He doesn’t demand that of me; it’s the opposite. “I’ve heard you on the radio.” He sounds self conscious. “You’re… you’re good.”

“Really? How good? Give me three words or less.” I can’t believe he knows my music. Oh my god.

Geralt tilts his head with a playful glint in his eyes, and my heart plummets. He quickly places his hand near my hand, just shy of a touch and assumes sincerity. “Ensh’eass. Iwyn.” He clears his throat and glances at me awkwardly. “I mean, you’re charming and insightful and… sorrowful.”

Hot blood rushes back to my face and effectively melts it off. I wonder which song he was listening to and who he had lost.

“I wish I could get to hear you sing,” Geralt confesses and I mistakenly confuse the regret in his voice for old sadness. Past tense.

We end up sharing the steaming hot tea as the stars hum in the sky over the Morhen mountains. I inch closer, pressing my shoulder against his, and we are each other’s solid line of comfort in the dropping temperature. It feels like a prelude to a Great Masterpiece.

Geralt stoically tells me that he would’ve probably found the little Wolszczak girl if he had bothered to look closer. He didn’t realize the importance of little girls and their safety back then. Not until much later, when Destiny brought another child across his path.

”An old friend of mine portaled her to the hotel room I was staying in. She was six months old and already an orphan. I didn’t consider it my responsibility, told Mousack to take her to someone else who knew what they were doing. A parent.”

”The next time Mousack sent her back I was sharing bed with a woman. Thank gods we had already finished what we set out to do, though I bet Mousack would’ve enjoyed his revenge either way. The baby was smiling up at me like she was the true mastermind behind the joke. I knew then that she was mine.’”

With Geralt it’s not about the specific words that are said as much as what he shows; what he lets show despite himself. The evidence of how much he cares lies in his decision-making and his actions. He adopted a child because she needed him, committed himself fully to this tiny, diaper-pooping lego-addict and never looked back.

”Well, that explains so much about _you_ ,” I say. I have certainly experienced in person Geralt’s special brand of saving the day. Wait. Did I just compare myself to a baby?

”I, uh, I never...” I pat Geralt’s hand like a flustered teenager on his first date _._ ”I never thanked you for finding me in the woods. You didn’t, you know. You didn’t have to come to my rescue so to speak, or say what you said. But you did.”

“What did I say?” Of course he picks up on the one thing I didn’t want him to hear.

I want to rub the embarrassment out of my neck. “You said I had good instincts. No one has ever accused me of that before.” I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it has sort of stuck.”

”I’m glad to have been of service.” Geralt catches my restlessly hovering hand and turns it in his palm. His thumb presses down lightly in the center my palm and I shiver from the tingling sensation. Hands. Hand holding. More intense than I’ve ever given it credit for. ”A Witcher should always appear where he’s needed, I was taught.”

”Always? Sounds like a chore.”

”My teacher didn’t believe in half-measures.” Now a deliberate caress across my palm, like a dragging feather, back and forth. His fingertips find the calluses put there by my strings and heat mingles between our hands. I want to gasp. I want to grasp and hold on.

My dry mouth starts moving without permission. ”Will you go to Aidirn to search for her? Perhaps other places that’s worth a visit?” _I’m going. Would you like to tag along? We could go splitsies on the gas money. It could be our adventure._

I swallow the words I couldn’t verbalise. A choking poet—no wonder I’m looking at unemployment for an unforeseeable future.

Geralt’s gaze returns to a point somewhere far out there in the mountains, drawn by a cry I can’t detect with my human senses.

Another relict crosses the destroyed border and he feels like he’s being pulled in a thousand directions. Taking care of Ciri should be his only job, but it’s not. Haven’t been for the last two years. He routinely puts her second to his obligations as a Witcher, and he knows in his heart that she deserves a better life. An ordinary life with no shortage of friendships and kinship beyond her family, a life of inclusion and the agency to choose. Her own path, untethered by her father’s past. I deserve the same: a life.

He knows what he’s been cowardly avoiding for the last two and a half years. At least he had her for a short period of time.

My hand is responsibly put back in my lap. ”We’ve reached out to a few people who might notice her arrival. Should she cause enough damage.”

”Oh. Right.” I nod. It’s difficult to correct my naive assumptions. “That’s… that’s better than nothing I guess. I’ll still go and have a look around, of course. There’s a lot of towns that we’ve been to. Old haunts she might recognize, if we’re lucky. You’re welcome to tag along? In fact, I’d prefer the company.”

I glance at him expectantly, heart pounding in my throat. That’s the first offer of commitment I have made since I cannot remember when.

Geralt grunts indifferently and pretends to sip the by now cool liquid in the bottom of the lid. I will be offended by his dismissal for a while but I’m young and I will bounce back, he decides. The most important thing is that I will be alive. Over his dead body that he’ll allow me anywhere near Yennefer of Vengerberg, but that’s the one harsh truth he will keep to himself. Those contacts he and Triss will talk to? Not a word of their reports will reach me, he’ll make sure of it.

I wait with bated breath for another response, the response I have already constructed in my head _._ For the first time in my life I wish for a continuation of whatever _this_ is, this seed in our late night conversation, this morphing common ground.

Instead my optimism is brushed off, the conversation dies and my hands are cold. Sifting through the facts (which my mind is motivated to do only when it has exhausted all other options and all the fire exits are barricaded), uncovers some uncomfortable facts.

Fact 1: Geralt never would’ve sought out my company hadn’t it been for the relicts and their hankering for my blood.

Fact 2: I appreciated Geralt for putting the kettle on and lending me his blanky to prevent me from catching a cold, but maybe that is all there is to it. Geralt being nice and chivalrous because that is what a Witcher has been taught. It’s in the job description, and he’s a decent person and I’m just needy with no clue on how to make it on my own.

Fact 3: Yennefer is no longer of Geralt’s concern. The druids are vanquished. He has a wilderness reserve to restore and I? I’m no better than a tourist stepping out of my vehicle on a wildlife safari to do the hula in front of the lions. I should stop. I should show some damn tact for once in my life and just. Just stop.


	14. In the footsteps of Ash Williams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe it - you're at the final chapter and you're still alive!

Three weeks later I let myself into Yennefer’s apartment with her spare keys. I stop one step over the threshold, listening to the permeating silence in the empty living space. Dust is beginning to show on the furniture and the stuff Yennefer left behind when she packed her bag for our trip. I pick up a bra and some other clothes I side-stepped last time, putting them back in the drawers in case the landlord or the police show up. She wouldn’t like strangers in her home passing judgement.

I’m searching for clues that I might have missed before leaving for Aidirn (not that I achieved much besides distributing my personal contacts to an unknown number of musicians, bar owners and shelters). I’m embarrassingly out of my depth and it’s starting to wear me down.

Yennefer has been researching her past and others ‘like her’, it’s evident from the ‘detective pen in a crime show’ state of her home office. There one missing is Aiden, because she knows him already. Yennefer was the first person Aiden had met to be remotely like him, sparkly-wise.

He told me when he eventually spilled the beans. She wasn’t just his manager. She was an ally, and I like to believe that Yennefer felt less alone after they met. Not much was said to Aiden about the true reason behind her visit to Morhen, though. Just that Yennefer found it harder to control her Chaos and that the von Everecs had reached out with a solution. Told her that they would help her in exchange for her protection. She should’ve known better, but these two idiots were both lost and desperate for answers. The elderly druids would be able to guide them, on how to not blow a magical fuse in public.

I guess Yennefer was pulled in because they claimed to have known her parents.

Wait. There’s something there, isn’t there? Elders, parents. Even Geralt had a mentor whom he thought of dearly, and the Witcher Lambert took one look at Aiden and offered to teach him. (Well. Lambert offered to drain Aiden on the regular in the name of hunting relicts, and Aiden told him to shove it.)

Everyone is searching for some support. They just have to make sure they find the right fit; someone to stand fast when shit hits the fan. A shoulder to lean on, if you will. No half-measures. Not someone who crumbles to the ground and needs swaddling, like me. Dammit!

I sit down in Yennefer’s couch believing I might have the answer to more than one question that’s been plaguing me, a hard truth to accept but necessary. I might have been part of Yennefer’s slim reliance on me as a friend and confidant. I might have given few reasons to rely on me in a pickle, and for Geralt to trust my suitability as a partner in crime. Hell, even I didn’t trust my instincts! Except, my instinct was right about Geralt, weren’t they? I saw a decent person and I liked him and I stuck to my guns for once. Until I folded, like I always do. I have to… I have to call Aiden.

Aiden sounds lonely. “What do you want, Jaskier?”

“Yo-Yo Ma, my favorite beanstalk,” I greet. “Has the sun shone upon you today? Are your crops watered? How do you feel about taking another road trip?”

Aiden sighs heavily. It’s all for the galleries. “As long as it’s not Morhen.”

“My apologies for being unclear,” I say, popping up from the couch now that the new plan has taken a hold of me, ”It’s Morhen, and you’re driving.”

I wanted to write Yennefer a message before I left. I found a stack of colorful post-its and stuck one of them on the fridge at eye-level: _I love you, call me ASAP as possible!_

I added my phone number, and then my email address in case she had forgotten, and then I drew a picture on a third post-it with two stick figures holding hands, with smoke coming off the girl figure’s head. On the forth post-it I drew a stick figure spanking the other stick figure on its 3-shaped butt (such a teeny weeny little thing compared to the real counterpart, I was experiencing withdrawals). _Geralt_ I wrote and drew an arrow. _I think I like him, what do I do???_

Let’s face it, I’m lost without her advice. (Which is why I grabbed a pen and a notebook from Yen’s desk and sat down in front of a season of the Office. Or two. Letting the inspiration come to me, alone and desperate at 2 AM.)

It strikes me when I’m standing on the sidewalk that I maybe shouldn’t have left those post-its and 49 compromising drawings of Geralt in Yennefer’s apartment in case the cops come looking (curious fact: those drawings are indeed confiscated and are yet to be released by the Vizima police department). Oh well, it’s too late for regret now. It’s late morning and Aiden pulls up by the curb.

Aiden sits passive in the driver’s seat before he does a violent double-take at my extra luggage. He scans the empty street like a felon on the run. “What the fuck is that thing? Are you trying to get us arrested?”

“No. I have a plan.” I have a plan, and it will work. At least it seemed like a solid, genius plan this morning when I knocked on my landlord’s door at 7 AM (after a brief change of clothes).

‘Morning, Ash. I need a favor,’ I said, willing the tremble out of my voice caused by the sight of the delicious bear in front of me. Toe-curling flashbacks to our encounter in the laundry room.

Mr. Williams mumbled some incomprehensible but amicable answer, his bushy eyebrows drawing together as he half-assed ran his gaze over me. He was wearing a wife-beater and looked like he had been dragged seven times through hell last night. ‘It’s too early in the morning, bucko. My heart is still jackhammering like a quarterback on prom night from last time.’ He started to close the door.

I put my foot between the post and the door, adding quickly, ‘And I forgot to tell you that my windows won’t open. Would you mind having a look while I’m out of town?’

Ash reared back. ‘What got into you, kid? A demon?’ He leaned in to inspect my face like he meant every word of concern. ‘Drugs?’

‘No, just grew a spine,’ I shrugged and gave my most charming smile. ‘So, you want to hear me out or should I tell the board that we fucked?’

‘You little shit.” Ash eyed me, impressed I could tell. ‘Alright, enough with the pillow talk. What do you need?’

“Help me put this in the back. Do you mind making a pit stop by my storage unit? I have some extra stuff there.”

Aiden grumbles. “It won’t fit back there.”

“That’s what he said. Or she,” I say, opening the door to the backseat. There’s a cage on the seat. For pets.

For cats, to be specific. The kitten meows at me with imploring eyes that seem too big for its tiny, tiny, super tiny constitution. “Oh,” I say. Suddenly it’s obvious that Aiden’s cat t-shirt wasn’t ironic at all. “When did this happen?”

Aiden shrugs. “Picked her up yesterday.”

The drive north is enervating and tedious. I refuse to associate the gorgeous view to the opening scene in the Shining where the Torrances drive their yellow Volkswagen Beetle along the meandering mountain road with the lake view and the dot of the Overlook hotel. Not to be paranoid but a chill travels up my neck like I’m being watched by some entity in the backseat.

Could be the kitten.

“What’s your cat’s name?” I ask diplomatically.

Aiden doesn’t bother to take his eyes off the road. It is awfully winding. He sighs. “I might go with Sabrina.” 

“Sab—“ I hit the driver in the arm. “It’s like you want us to become possessed by evil spirits. You couldn’t pick something magically neutral?”

Aiden steers the car further from the 90 degrees steep decline. “Sabrina is a good witch. Mostly. Besides, I’m not the one bringing torture devices. Is that _beep_ for Valdo?”

“It’s not for torture, gosh. It’s a device of persuasion, common in most households.” I can’t believe how paranoid Aiden can be sometimes. “Will you relax? I’m trying to reach my zen.”

I lean back in my seat. Aiden doesn’t talk to me for the rest of the drive.

Geralt perches on the ridge of Nuolja mountain, where he finds the shedded scales of a wyvern and scattered remnants of its nest. Signs indicate that a successful rearing has taken place, and the nestlings have left for good. Geralt quenches his thirst from the waterskin and eyes the four consecutive peaks of the Drakryggen.

Glaciers carved the landscape a long time ago, after and before the relicts inhabited the area. Amazing how species that have coexisted for thousands of years are suddenly asked to restrict their hunting grounds to a fraction of their original inhabitat. Well. The borders are breached now. From what he can tell all the checkpoints upholding the Quen fence have been drained of magic by the Everecs, some as far back as a decade. The relicts are free; they are also in more danger than ever.

Geralt returns the waterskin to his belt and prepares the descent back to the cottage. The Witchers have their work cut out for them for months to come, and that’s the understatement of the century. Tracking down relicts that escaped the reserve a decade ago? The numbers must be considerable and the trails have run cold.

A movement in his peripheral vision catches his attention. There, in the valley below is a fuel-spewing car, destined to ruin the rest of Geralt’s afternoon. His scowl deepens.

Is there an infestation? A thousand curses on entitled tourists.

*

The front yard of the Witchers’ cottage is buzzing with activity when Aiden and I roll up. I am already dizzy from the steep climb and harbor a new-found respect for Aiden’s rust bucket of a car for making it to the high altitude with the gearbox intact. I’m increasingly off-balanced by the sight of all the extra vehicles and people. Eskel is loading a truck with the assistance of the button-nosed young woman now dressed in jeans and a familiar shirt. _How come she gets to be here and I don’t?_

Another woman with disheveled hair, bags under her eyes and a youthful pout walks around with Ciri chatting by her side and what looks like an energy drink in her hand; she’s the infamous sorceress Triss Merigold. She walks up to and puts her arms around Eskel’s neck, and relaxes in his arms. He bends down and hitches up Ciri to perch between them. A solid family unit.

My mind completely blanks out the moment I spot Geralt on the opposite side of the yard, squatting down in tight black denim to check the chain on the trailer attached to his Jeep. He looks closed-off and single-mindly consumed by the task.

I know exactly what to do. But in a much more real sense, I have no idea what to do. The grand, romantic gesture I had in mind suddenly seems very juvenile, in comparison to all this disciplined productivity.

“Stop overthinking,” Aiden suggests before scooping Sabrina up (heading straight for Lambert even though he tries to do inconspicuous circles around the man), leaving me to percolate in my own indecisive juices.

Geralt flinches a bit when he rises and spots me through the windshield. He’s clean-shaved, the thin network of scars are bared on lean cheeks, and his white hair is freshly washed and neatly combed, and he’s so ethereally beautiful it makes me weep with joy. Despite the simple jeans and t-shirt he has never looked more sharp... and more depreciatory of my presence. Damn. He clearly didn’t expect my return.

This was a mistake. Geralt thanked the stars when he no longer had to play the self-sacrificing savior to my swooning maiden, in a story where my ex is literally chained to a wall in the basement. (No, he’s fine. Hahah. I’m an excellent forgiver of people, exes in particular.) The fact remains: we are not in a trashy romance novel where we’re obliged to run towards each other in slow motion and get married by a seagull. This is the disappointing reality of 2020 and Witchers have shit to do.

I am contemplating the dexterity required to climb over to the driver’s seat, rev the engine and reverse-drive down the mountain, when Geralt looks me straight in the eye with a silent question: _Are you coming outside?_

I gather strength with a hefty inhale. _I guess I am._

The trailer visibly favors its left side. The metal, or whatever the material in the shell that seems too fragile for the trailer’s use, groans and protests whenever the ‘content’ moves.

“Soooooooooooooo,” I draw out the one-word inquiry and fiddle with my hands. “May I take a peek? I never got a chance to see one up close.” _When it wasn’t attacking me and trying to eat me._

Geralt’s mouth quirks but thankfully he refrains from commenting. He opens a side-window that’s quite obviously a peephole into the bowels of the trailer.

I step into the space Geralt’s bulk just occupied and try not to react viscerally to Geralt folding his arms and hovering close instead of taking a step back. The creature is dormant and fucking ginormous. I suck in a breath of awe at the sight of the shaggy mane and soft golden coat.

“He suffered minor injuries during capture but we discovered a more complicated condition when we examined him.” Geralt says, breath close to my ear and voice soft as velvet. “Lambert did what he could but he doesn’t have the specialty to perform surgery on him yet so we’re moving him to another clinic. Who knows, we might find a girl for him too.”

“A clin—” I begin, but Aiden is faster.

“You treat animals?” He says to Lambert. I’ve never heard him speak like that; admiration-adjacent. It says a lot about Aiden that he respects a man for treating relicts higher than he respects a man for saving his life.

Lambert levels Aiden with an expertly delivered, deadpan _Yeah, so what?_ Look that tells me he’s rendered speechless by the sight of Aiden and the bundle of furry grey joy sleeping underneath his chin.

“Relicts. I got my veterinarian degree last year,” he says with a matter-of-fact tone. He flicks the brim of his hat and spits in the grass. I wish I could turn to Yennefer in that moment and share this second-hand embarrassment.

Speaking of.

*

“ _No_.”

I squint in feigned confusion, “So is that a nay-no on the Mousack lead, or…?”

Geralt refuses to find my emotional blackmail adorable and yet! Yet he has willingly participated in this animated back and forth we’ve got going between us for the last twenty minutes. We are walking the path leading to the old watchtower. I’m flailing my hands in the low-hanging foliage and Geralt has no clear memory of how we got there. He might have made a subconscious decision to simply fade into the trees and I had followed him like a chattering monkey.

“It’s an all-embracing no, covering all facets of your request.”

“But I have thought this through a thousand times,” I insist, clamoring after him on the path and hanging on to passing tree branches with my arms. “Yennefer is a human nitrogen bomb so she needs guidance. That hasn’t changed. She’s in the market for a teacher, and I think _you_ know what kind of specialist she’s looking for. I’ve tried talking to her contacts—they wouldn’t help me. If not ms. Merigold then—” I grab Geralt by the proverbial sleeve, which means the warm smoothness of his bare wrist, and projects desperate optimism with every cell of my body. “You can track her through your network!”

Geralt glares down at my touch. “I heard you the first time. And I don’t have—” he grits his teeth. “A _network_.”

“But...she’s all alone out there!” I plead. “She needs us—she needs to know that I’m not mad at her for including me in an ancient ritual that initiated phase one in Operation Evil shitstorm. All I ask is for you to put me in contact with your friend the Mousack guy. I will take it from there.”

This man needs to work on his forgiving nature, is Geralt’s personal assessment. Well, he might be right in some aspect, but not when it comes to the people I love.

Geralt sighs and averts his gaze to the trees to spare himself the direct exposure to the blatant exhortation in my face. He refuses to find mitigating factors there, like my beseeching eyes and pinched brow. Geralt and his Witcher brothers are going back to their regular nomad lives. Triss is out of commission, requiring Eskel’s assistance for a while. Geralt and Lambert will have to double-down on scavenging for other natural places of elemental power. Another winter spent in bivouacs in the snow and the occasional motel room. Geralt doesn’t have time for matters of the heart. Certainly not of his own.

“I can’t afford pro bono work for an unemployed musician.”

“Aw, come on, not even if I give you Aiden as a down payment? I hear he’s useful.”

“You can’t barter people. That’s frowned upon in most circles.”

In theory, my plan could work. Mousack is a socialite of sorts, with access to better channels of information than Geralt, who is an unpolished blue-collar in comparison; the peasant to Mousack’s king. Yet he deeply regrets giving me the name. Geralt knows how this will end if he lets me be even a little part of the life he leads and he refuses to enable a civilian on a path that will inevitably lead to my death. Even if he’s at my side Evil may still be around the corner.

“Knowing your track record you will buy a djinn-infested soda at the first gas station you pass.” He has the audacity to smirk at the mental image. _Smirk!_ He’s being an ass to me for noble reasons, and it’s infuringly predictable and unnecessary.

“Ah!” I clutch my chest in mock horror. “I can’t believe you’re cracking a joke in the middle of our argument. You’re breaking proper fight etiquette.”

Geralt shrugs with feigned indifference. ”I fight dirty.”

My dignity requests a sidebar, allowing me to resume a more dignified posture in face of this pulse-altering attack—no! Enough with the pleasantries and the begging. If there was one thing life taught me by saddling me with Valdo, is that I’m done being everyone’s doormat.

I jut my chin. “I know my areas of expertise doesn’t extend to bounty hunting and monsters. I know I need help. It’s alright. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I can do things on my own, but not on my own, if that makes sense.”

Geralt hesitates. “I never said you couldn’t. But this is different—“

I raise my palm. “But you did. You did, and you chose not to help me, but my balls are not confined to your court, Geralt. I have other alternatives. Aiden is now my co-pilot, my chauffeur and my stand-in Witcher slash private security.” I start walking backwards from Geralt, back to Aiden and adoptive daughter Sabrina. “Admittedly he can be a jerk, but we both know how he can warm up to people. Oh ho, I’m so gonna cosy up to that human torch whenever I feel a chill coming on. Mm, yes, I’m sure it will be toasty.” I give myself a hug to drive home the message.

Geralt has stiffened during my speech, apparently sensing the change in the conversation. “Jaskier,” he says, squinting at me with a dangerous glint in his eye. Of interest? Hope? He looks at my self-hugging arms like he wants to pounce. “Why are you here?”

 _Oh, shit, he’s on to me and my devious ulterior motives. Time to skidaddle._ I spread my arms, demonstrating all the extra time and space I have to my disposal. “To hand off the Extreme Repulsiveness Award to Valdo, what do you think? I’m obviously out of leads, I’m out of options and my work schedule suddenly blew wide open when my manager did! All I got is time on my hands and a chainsaw in the trunk. I’m down to one last stupid joke and I’m afraid you’ll—” I bite down hard, “I’m afraid you’ll reject me again.”

Geralt walks after me as if he’s pulled in an invisible string to my waist; wary of every root I barely avoid tripping over. “A chainsaw?”

He smiles wider than I have ever seen him smile. I know he’s picturing me wielding it, mother fucker. I’m going to get him for that.

“Yeah.” I shrug with feigned indifference, afraid that he’ll laugh at me. I can do no strings and flirt, but I cannot straight up tell a boy I like him and that I might have fallen for him in that other, awkward sense of the word like, I’ve _fallen hard_. Every cell in my body is scratching skin and shouting at me _it’s a trap! It’s a trap!_ But Valdo was a mere chafe, a persistent chafe that wore me down due to the passage of time and other circumstances. There’s nothing stopping me now from changing shoes; to walk a different path of my own choosing. I’ve been trying to get out from under Valdo’s thumb for years, not realizing I was already free.

“You were supposed to walk out the front door when we arrived, and I would already be leaning against the hood all seductive and oozing competence and holding a very large and very suggestive chainsaw in my hands. Slightly erect. Actually, it’s a beast, and it attaches to my hand because my landlord lost a hand in an accident.”

I encircle my wrist with my other hand trying for a crude gesture, but all the multitasking has me stumbling over a tree root. Geralt catches me by the arm, steady and firm as if he were rooted to the earth. He holds me there to keep me from backing into a branch. His other hand drifts to my waist.

”You’ll never give up, will you?” He sounds pained. He’s already made arrangements to return to a solitary life; to have Ciri stay with Eskel and Triss not only during the mage’s convalescence but indefinitely. He’s abdicated his fatherhood and everything was going according to plan until I showed up. Now he wants it all back, despite how irrational and unrealistic he still believes it is.

“Nope. It wouldn’t have been subtle or mature but… I wanted to show you that I’m not leaving, and I’m not interested in watching from the sidelines this time. I’m 100% onboard.”

My nervous gaze flickers to Geralt’s thoughtful ambers, picking up the trepidation hidden there. My hand grasps his shirt to stifle that overwhelming impulse to hold on for dear life; assure him that I’m here for him as well.

Geralt’s hand presses on my back, securing me against his chest. His voice grows huskier not just by lust, but by fear of the consequences. “What exactly would you be onboard with?” _This?_

My ribcage heaves against his, my breath catching over his mouth. “The blood,” I respond, my body tingling as he tilts his head to watch my lips. It seems like the trees themselves lean further down to listen to what I have to say. ”The monsters and the carnage. And this.” I add. And then I conquer the last space between us and kiss him.

Another shy grace of lips, testing the waters, before Geralt responds in earnest, a wet, warm surge of heat. His arms tighten around me even further and I feel like I’m deceiving gravity by having Geralt as my tether.

It’s a good kiss, transitioning from chaste to hungrier and hungrier. It’s a _great first kiss,_ it’s...

“Jaskier…” He sighs, forehead resting against mine. “You don’t know what you’re agreeing to.” He pictures the life I will leave behind, the regrets I will have.

“There’s no going back now.” I have a speech prepared for this occasion, written at night in front of the TV _._ ”All the logic, the fear, I realize I’ll have to set all those concerns aside if I want more out of life. I write and sing about love but the truth is that I’ve lived my whole life alone, afraid of heartbreak. I thought I was facing my fears every day by performing my songs and putting them out there, but I want to risk it for real this time. With _you_ ,” I clarify, if that wasn’t evident. “You specifically. Is that okay? Tell me I don’t have to do it on my own.”

Geralt’s expression softens, ”You won’t do it on your own,” he promises, and kisses me again like he’s been walking around with his own little note in his pouch, doodling little hearts around my name. Like he’s relieved he won’t do this on his own, either, like us pressed together will be our natural state from here on out.

There is the small matter of an unwelcome audience to our private moment, a nest of venomous arachas creeping down the tree bark. Geralt glances up in time to notice their sticky pincers and prehensile feelers reaching for my wafting hair.

Being the dork that he is and not interested in breaking our shameless necking he seizes me tighter around the waist, pirouettes me in an elegant half-circle and dips me low. The man does know how to waltz.

I let out a surprised yelp as my fringe brushes the dirt and blood rushes to my head, but I’m not deterred. I hook my taco-crushing thigh around his ass and my arms around his neck and drag him down in the dirt.

It’s the best first kiss I ever had.

*

There’s a forgotten fort in the northern part of Kaedwen that was once home to a school of Witchers. The ruins have long since disappeared under lichen and pines in windswept vigil, no longer visible from the window pane in Geralt’s Jeep. Doesn’t mean it’s not there, in the periphery, silently passing by as Geralt and his brothers drive down the mountain pass. His keen nose picks up the lush fragrance of the forest, the same pine and mulch scents permanenting his youth. It mixes with the kid-approved shampoo in his daughter’s hair, and the worn leather of the seats.

His new life is in this space, capsuled in fragile metal, worth the exertion of keeping it safe. Ciri and Geralt are heading for the border. There was never a question that they would, to borrow an allegory from Lambert, ride off towards the sunset together. Time will move like tires on the road and the landscape will change with the seasons, but the Witcher and his daughter will barely notice, because that’s how it has always been and that’s how it will be.

Or, something will give, like the snapping of a rubber band. Tectonic plates will move, so will planes and spheres, and another vagabond will cross their path. A singer-songwriter down on his luck will wander the roadside, and there will be room for him in the Jeep. Geralt’s gaze wanders to the rearview mirror, catching the attention of the backseat passenger.

I look up from my journal, skin crinkling in the corners of my eyes before I wink faux seductively. “May I offer you a chip?”

I tear the bag open and hand one off to Ciri, who grabs it mid-breath in the middle of her impassioned rant about ”goths” and how much “uncle Eskel loves all the goths” (she means goats).

Geralt fights a smile. Turns his attention back to the road. He can’t tell yet, if he’s made the right call, bringing me into his life; on this path that’s not for the faint-hearted—but on the other hand, I’m not one of those.

Everyday we start over. We put all our aches and sorrows aside, and we let ourselves simply be, in our little bungalow on the quiet cul-de-sac in the city that has forgotten. Then the path calls, and we stock up Roach and we bring the baby and the goat with a gnawed ear, and we drive. 

**THE END**

*fireworks*

_**Afterwords** _

Yennefer, it's been two years and not a word. Know that I miss you and I love you more than words can describe. Remember when you said you wouldn’t leave me, and instead you forced me to grow up and take responsibility for my own actions? I guess I should thank you for the gift of personal growth (sincerely fuck you). If you find yourself in the vicinity of the Morhen woods, know there’s a lovely new custodian living there and she isn’t afraid of nothing. She will be more than happy to accommodate you—just don’t show up unannounced on the full moon.

To the skeptics and my parents, not a single line about the monsters in this book is true. It was all drugs, people! And wine. So much wine.

The rest of you, do the right thing when Destiny puts you in the path of a relict in the wild. You may call, email, tweet, or DM Witchers Geralt, Eskel and Lambert, full contact dets are on the back cover, courtesy of yours truly. Take care now. 


End file.
